IDENT  HAYES 


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THE  ADMINISTRATION 

OF 

PRESIDENT  HAYES 


THE  ADMINISTRATION 

OF 

PRESIDENT  HAYES 


THE     LARWILL     LECTURES,     1915, 
DELIVERED  AT  KENYON  COLLEGE 


BY 

JOHN  W.  BURGESS,  PH.D.,  Ju.D.,  LL.D, 

FOHMEBLT  PROFESSOR  OF  POLITICAL  SCIENCE  AND  CONSTITUTIONAL  LAW,  AND 

DEAN  OF  THE  FACULTIES  OF   POLITICAL   SCIENCE,   PHILOSOPHY 

AND  PUBE  SCIENCE,   IN  COLUMBIA  UNIVEBSITT 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
1916 


COPYRIGHT,  1916,  BY 
CHARLES  SCRIBNKR'S  SONS 


Published   April,    1916 


CONTENTS 

PAGB 

INTRODUCTION vii 

LECTURE 

I.    THE  POLITICAL,  ECONOMIC,  AND  SOCIAL  SIT 
UATION  IN  THE  YEAR  1876 1 

II.  THE  ELECTION  OF  1876  AND  THE  INAUGU 
RATION  37 

III.    THE  SOUTHERN  POLICY  AND  THE  FINANCIAL 

POLICY *    .     .     .      70 

IV.  THE  RE-ESTABLISHMENT  OF  THE  GOVERN 
MENT  UPON  ITS  CONSTITUTIONAL  FOUNDA 
TION  .  .  , Ill 


340199 


INTRODUCTION 

FOR  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  it 
has  been  my  constant,  growing,  and 
strengthening  conviction  that  the  per 
sonality  and  administration  of  Rutherford  B. 
Hayes,  the  nineteenth  President  of  the  United 
States  of  America,  have  not  been  duly  and  suf 
ficiently  estimated  and  appreciated  by  his  coun 
trymen  and  the  world.  About  a  dozen  years 
ago  I  suggested  this  view,  or  rather,  as  I  con 
sider  it,  pointed  out  this  fact,  in  a  volume  in 
the  Scribner's  American  History  Series,  en 
titled  "Reconstruction  and  the  Constitution," 
and  I  have  been  waiting  all  these  years  for  a 
proper  opportunity  to  amplify  this  opinion  and 
state  with  some  fulness  the  basis  upon  which 
it  rests.  When,  therefore,  in  the  autumn  of 
1914,  the  invitation  came  to  me  from  Doctor 
Peirce,  the  President  of  Kenyon  College,  the 
Alma  Mater  of  President  Hayes,  to  deliver,  as 
the  Larwill  Lectures  of  1915,  a  short  course  of 
lectures  before  the  authorities  and  students  of 


Vll 


viii  INTRODUCTION 

that  historic  institution  upon  the  administration 
of  President  Hayes,  I  felt  that  the  occasion  had 
at  last  presented  itself  for  realizing  my  long- 
cherished  hope,  and,  although  I  had  not  for 
several  years  undertaken  so  long  a  journey  or 
assumed  so  serious  a  task,  I  did  not  hesitate  to 
accept  the  invitation  and  to  enter  upon  the 
work  of  preparation  for  the  discharge  of  the 
duty  which  it  involved. 

On  the  25th  of  October,  1915,  we  arrived  in 
Gambier,  the  seat  of  Kenyon  College,  a  village 
of  less  than  one  thousand  inhabitants,  situated 
upon  a  ridge  of  about  a  mile  in  length  in  the 
hill-country  of  Ohio,  at  the  south  end  of  which 
is  located  the  original  building  called  Old  Ken- 
yon  and  at  the  north  end  the  Theological  Hall, 
connected  by  the  beautiful  Scholars  Walk, 
which  is  lined  with  grand  forest  trees,  broken 
here  and  there  with  the  other  college  buildings 
and  the  residences  of  the  members  of  the  faculty, 
a  place,  one  could  discover  with  a  glance,  for 
simple  living  and  high  thinking. 

We  were  entertained  most  hospitably  and 
interestingly  by  President  and  Mrs.  Peirce  and 
by  Bishop  and  Mrs.  Leonard,  who  came  from 


INTRODUCTION  ix 

Cleveland  to  open  the  Bishop's  residence  in 
Gambier  for  this  purpose  and  in  order  to  be 
present  at  the  lectures,  and  brought  with  them 
those  stanch  friends  and  supporters  of  Kenyon, 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  David  Norton.  The  members 
of  the  faculty,  the  students,  and  the  people  of 
the  village  showed  their  great  respect  for,  and 
interest  in,  Kenyon's  most  celebrated  alumnus 
by  attending  en  masse  the  recital  of  his  great 
contributions  to  the  welfare  of  his  country  and 
the  upbuilding  of  its  institutions.  For  four 
full  hours  they  listened  with  unflagging  atten 
tion,  and  with  a  reverence  which  manifested 
that  they  were  consciously  joining  with  the 
speaker  in  a  service  of  piety  due  from  their 
college  and  country  to  the  memory  of  that  grad 
uate  of  their  institution  who,  more  than  any 
other,  has  made  it  famous  in  the  history  of  edu 
cation  and  in  the  annals  of  public  achievement. 
From  Gambier  we  went,  on  invitation  from 
Colonel  and  Mrs.  Webb  C.  Hayes  and  in  the 
company  of  President  and  Mrs.  Peirce,  to  visit 
the  Hayes  Mansion,  Museum,  and  Mausoleum 
at  Fremont.  We  were  met  at  the  station  by 
the  friendly,  big-hearted  Colonel  who  con- 


x  INTRODUCTION 

ducted  us  to  Spiegel  Grove.  At  the  main  por 
tal  of  the  great  house  stood  Mrs.  Hayes  to  wel 
come  us  and  extend  to  us  the  genial  hospitality 
of  her  beautiful  home,  which  proved  to  be  one 
of  the  rarest,  most  interesting,  and  most  in 
structive  experiences  of  our  lives.  The  Man 
sion  is  very  large  and  commodious,  filled  with 
furnishings,  pictures,  statuary,  and  curios 
gathered  by  Colonel  and  Mrs.  Hayes  from  all 
parts  of  the  world.  It  is  situated  in  a  magnif 
icent  grove  of  huge  forest  trees  of  every  de 
scription,  through  which  runs  for  over  half  a 
mile  the  old  Indian  trail  from  Lake  Erie  to  the 
Mississippi,  marked  and  preserved  by  Colonel 
Hayes  with  the  greatest  care.  The  Mausoleum 
and  Museum  are  located  within  the  same 
grounds.  The  Hayes  Museum  erected  by  the 
State  of  Ohio,  to  which  the  entire  Spiegel 
Grove  property  has  been  conveyed  by  the 
Hayes  heirs,  is  a  noble  memorial  to  Ohio's 
great  son,  and  is  the  point  of  central  interest 
of  the  domain.  It  contains  the  President's 
correspondence,  note-books,  diaries,  and  his 
splendid  library  of  Americana,  together  with 
the  relics  and  mementos  of  his  entire  public 


INTRODUCTION 


XI 


life,  both  civil  and  military,  and  of  the  life  of 
Mrs.  Hayes  as  mistress  of  the  White  House 
of  the  nation.  To  the  Museum,  therefore,  we 
soon  gravitated  and  spent  within  its  massive 
walls  the  larger  part  of  the  time  of  our  visit  in 
viewing  its  most  interesting  contents.  While 
there  Colonel  Hayes  asked  me  for  the  original 
manuscript  copy  of  the  lectures  which  I  had 
just  delivered  at  Gambier.  Happily,  I  had 
taken  it  with  me  to  Ohio,  and  it  was  lying  at 
that  moment  in  my  trunk  in  the  Mansion.  We 
immediately  composed  a  dedicatory  page,  fas 
tened  it  upon  the  front  of  the  manuscript  and 
deposited  the  manuscript  in  the  Museum,  there 
to  remain  forever  as  my  modest  tribute  to  the 
man  and  woman  whom  I  have  long  revered  as 
among  the  noblest  and  the  best  which  our 
great  country  has  ever  produced,  and  with 
this  I  felt  that  my  pilgrimage  to  their  shrine 
was  complete. 

JOHN  W.  BURGESS. 

"ATHENWOOD,"  NEWPORT,  R.  I., 
March  4,  1916. 


THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 
PRESIDENT  HAYES 

LECTURE  I 

THE   POLITICAL,  ECONOMIC,  AND   SOCIAL 
SITUATION  IN  THE  YEAR   1876. 

KENYON  College  has  called  me  here  to 
give  a  brief  account  of  the  administration 
of  the  national  government  by  your  fel 
low  citizen  and  fellow  alumnus,  Mr.  Hayes, 
during  his  presidency,  from  1877  to  1881.  It  is, 
therefore,  no  part  of  my  task  to  delineate  the 
personal  character  of  Mr.  Hayes.  And  yet  I  can 
not  help  relating  to  you  the  incident  of  my  one 
and  only  meeting  with  Mr.  Hayes  and  with  Mrs. 
Hayes  —  for  one  who  ever  saw  them  together 
could  never  think  of  speaking  of  them  apart. 
It  was  in  the  summer  of  1877,  at  the  Fabyan 
House,  in  the  White  Mountains  of  New  Hamp 
shire,  when  Mr.  Evarts,  the  Secretary  of  State, 


2          THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

was  conducting  the  President  on  his  tour  through 
New  England.  The  guests  of  the  Fabyan 
House,  and  of  all  the  hotels  near  it,  gathered  at 
Fabyan  station  to  see  the  President  and,  in 
Yankee  fashion,  to  size  him  up.  It  was  a  very 
hot  day  even  in  the  mountains,  and  the  presi 
dential  party  issued  from  the  cars  limp,  travel- 
stained,  and  weary.  Of  them  all  only  Mrs. 
Hayes  seemed  to  have  preserved  vigor  and  vi 
vacity.  On  invitation  of  my  old  friend  Judge 
Horace  Gray,  who  was  of  the  party,  I  went 
into  the  parlor  of  the  hotel  and  was  introduced 
by  him  to  the  President  and  Mrs.  Hayes,  and 
the  quarter  of  an  hour  of  conversation  which  I 
was  privileged  to  have  with  them  was  one  of  the 
most  pleasant,  profitable,  and  instructive  of  my 
whole  life.  I  had  voted  for  Mr.  Hayes,  but 
from  the  moment  of  that  short  interview  I  was 
a  Hayes  man,  and  also  a  Mrs.  Hayes  man,  as 
never  before.  Clear,  sparkling  intelligence, 
sound  judgment,  spotless  character,  and  charm 
are  a  rare  combination,  but  fifteen  minutes  of 
personal  contact  with  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Hayes  con 
stituted  an  ample  period  in  which  to  discover 
that  one  stood  face  to  face  with  such  a  com- 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  3 

bination,  if  never  before.     It  was  a  great  priv 
ilege  to  have  known  them  even  thus  slightly. 

The  social,  political,  governmental,  and  eco 
nomic  condition  of  the  United  States  in  1876 
was  very  far  from  satisfactory.  Really,  it 
seemed  as  if  the  American  system  was  in  decay 
—  had  been  tried  and  found  wanting.  The  re 
construction  of  the  Southern  States  had  proved 
a  dismal  failure  and  had  produced  an  appalling 
situation.  The  Lincoln-Johnson  scheme  of  re 
construction,  the  so-called  executive  scheme, 
according  to  which,  by  executive  pardon  and 
amnesty,  a  loyal  electorate  should  be  created 
out  of  a  part  of  the  old  electorate  in  the  Southern 
communities,  upon  the  basis  of  which  loyal 
States  should  be  reconstructed,  had  been  con 
demned  by  Congress  as  seating  the  rebel  lead 
ers  in  power  again  and  as  thus  making  the 
re-establishment  of  slavery,  or  something  very 
like  it,  probable.  Moreover,  Congress  had 
asserted,  and  rightly  so,  that  the  rebuilding 
of  States  of  the  Union  within  the  rebellious 
districts  was  a  legislative  function,  not  an  ex 
ecutive,  and  that  the  Constitution  had,  in  the 
clause  conferring  upon  Congress  the  sole  power 


4          THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

of  admitting  new  States  into  the  Union,  settled 
that  point  against  the  executive  claim.  Fol 
lowing  this  principle,  Congress  had  set  aside 
the  Lincoln- Johnson  creations,  except  in  the 
case  of  Tennessee,  had  thrown  the  Southern 
country  into  military  districts  governed  by  gen 
erals  of  the  army  under  martial  law,  and  had 
finally  created  new  States  with  the  boundaries 
of  the  old  ante-bellum  States,  except  in  the  case 
of  Virginia,  upon  the  basis  of  the  new  negro 
citizenship  and  electorate  provided  in  the  Four 
teenth  and  Fifteenth  Amendments  to  the  na 
tional  Constitution. 

While  the  sincerity  of  Congress  in  these  mea 
sures  could  not  be  well  doubted,  the  result  had 
been  most  deplorable.  For  the  first  time  in 
American  history,  States  of  the  Union  had  been 
erected  upon  the  basis  of  the  democracy  of  the 
worst,  upon  the  basis  of  a  kakistocracy  instead 
of  a  democracy,  and  State  governments  were 
administered  by  adventurers  from  the  North, 
chosen  by  the  negro  electorate,  and  supported 
by  the  military  power  of  the  United  States. 

The  corruption  of  government  and  the  degra 
dation  of  society  resulting  from  such  a  situation 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  5 

were  indescribably  appalling.  Those  naturally 
fitted  for  tilling  the  fields  and  doing  the  menial 
work  of  life,  and  only  that,  were  artificially 
placed  in  part  in  the  positions  of  legislators,  ad 
ministrators,  teachers,  politicians,  and  in  part 
formed  the  proletariat  of  heelers  sustaining  these 
pseudo-leaders  in  power  and  receiving  from 
them  such  portion  of  the  public  plunder  as 
would  maintain  a  miserable  loafing  existence; 
while  the  natural  leaders,  disfranchised,  poverty- 
stricken,  discouraged  by  defeat,  and  dispirited 
by  their  subjection  to  barbarism,  robbery,  and 
vulgarity,  sat  confused,  benumbed,  and  hopeless 
around  their  ruined  firesides.  The  political  so 
ciety  was  turned  upside  down,  and  government 
was  debased  into  a  means  of  revenge,  theft,  and 
debauchery.  Taxes  and  debt  were  heaped  upon 
these  unhappy  communities  until  they  became 
tantamount  to  confiscation,  and  the  proceeds 
from  them  could  hardly  be  said  to  have  been 
expended  at  all.  They  were  simply  stolen. 

Then  came  the  movement  of  the  white  men  of 
the  South  to  free  themselves,  through  secret  or 
ganization  and  the  employment  of  intimidation 
and  violence,  from  the  unbearable  and  shameful 


6          THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

condition,  a  movement  which  was,  for  a  time 
at  least,  productive  of  almost  as  much  demorali 
zation  as  the  negro-carpetbag-military  domina 
tion  which  it  aimed  to  supplant.  The  so-called 
Ku-Klux  conspiracy  against  the  existing  order 
of  things  was  by  no  means  unnatural  or  unprec 
edented.  Whenever  and  wherever  a  tyranny, 
such  as  that  established  in  the  South  by  negro- 
carpetbag-military  rule,  has  existed,  a  tyranny 
which  cannot  be  shaken  by  regular  means,  re 
sort  to  secret  and  unlawful  movements  has  al 
most  always  been  had.  The  trouble  is  that 
such  movements  do  not  stop  with  the  over 
throw  of  the  tyranny  against  which  they  are 
directed,  but  those  engaged  in  them  use  their 
triumph  for  the  revenge  of  the  grievances  they 
have  suffered,  and  then  for  the  establishment  of 
a  new  tyranny  almost,  if  not  fully,  as  galling 
over  their  former  rulers.  Moreover,  the  neces 
sarily  reckless  and  unconscionable  means  em 
ployed  destroy  conscience,  character,  and  self- 
respect  in  those  who  practise  them.  The  pur 
poses  of  the  Ku-Klux  movement  and  kindred 
movements  were  to  suppress  the  negro  vote, 
to  frighten  the  negroes  from  the  commission 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  7 

of  crime,  and  to  keep  them  in  their  place 
and  make  them  work.  This  was  all  necessary 
for  the  rescue  of  civilization  from  the  decay 
which  threatened  to  consume  it,  but  the  con 
sciousness  that  the  methods  employed  were, 
from  a  legal  point  of  view,  wrongful  demoral 
ized  those  employing  them,  and  kept  alive  the 
apprehension  in  their  minds  that,  at  any  mo 
ment,  what  had  been  won  might  be  again  taken 
from  them  by  the  military  power  of  the  national 
government.  In  other  words,  they  themselves 
became  inoculated  with  the  terror  with  which 
they  had  conquered  the  negro,  and  this  bred 
increasing  hatred  of  the  national  government 
and  increasing  oppression  of  the  negro. 

It  must  be  also  kept  in  mind  that  three  of 
the  newly  established  Southern  States  had  not, 
in  1876,  escaped  by  the  employment  of  these 
means,  or  in  any  other  way,  from  the  ne- 
gro-carpetbag-military  domination,  viz.:  South 
Carolina,  Florida,  and  Louisiana.  So  long  as 
such  domination  remained  in  these  it  was  more 
likely,  as  it  was  felt,  to  be  restored  elsewhere, 
and  even  though  it  might  not  be,  it  still  kept 
the  abomination  ever  present  in  the  minds  of 


8          THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

the  people  of  the  South.  It  seemed  to  me,  a 
son  of  the  South,  but  a  resident  of  the  North, 
that  the  feeling  between  the  North  and  the 
South,  or  rather  the  feeling  of  the  South  against 
the  North,  was  more  bitter  in  the  year  1876 
than  in  the  year  1866.  The  great  problem  of 
preserving  the  fruits  of  the  victory  in  the  war, 
and  at  the  same  time  reconciling  the  vanquished 
to  their  lot,  was  still  to  be  solved.  In  fact,  it 
looked  as  if  a  new  revolt  might  break  out  at 
any  moment. 

Moreover,  the  course  of  reconstruction  had 
been  no  less  demoralizing  upon  the  internal 
structure  of  the  national  government  than  upon 
the  relations  of  the  political  society.  In  the 
first  place,  it  had  bred  in  Congress  a  new  spirit 
of  ruthless  domination.  This  was  manifest  not 
only  in  the  rigor  of  the  laws  passed  by  it  im 
posing  political  and  civil  equality,  especially 
upon  the  Southern  society,  and  in  many  respects 
social  equality,  as  in  the  use  of  schools,  public 
conveyances,  hotels,  inns,  theatres,  etc.,  but  also 
in  the  supremacy  asserted  by  it  over  the  execu 
tive  power  and  in  the  control  of  both  the 
civil  and  military  service  in  the  administration. 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  9 

The  struggle  began,  as  we  have  seen,  between 
President  Johnson  and  Congress  over  the  method 
of  the  reconstruction  of  States  in  the  South, 
but  did  not  end  with  the  Congress's  victory  in 
this  matter.  It  went  much  further,  both  while 
the  Republican  party  still  held  the  majority  in 
both  houses  of  Congress,  and  also  after  the 
Democratic  party  had  secured  the  control  of 
the  House  of  Representatives  by  the  elections 
of  1874. 

During  Johnson's  term,  it  manifested  itself 
chiefly  by  overcoming  the  President's  veto  upon 
legislation,  and  by  the  adoption,  in  the  Tenure 
of  Office  Acts,  of  the  principle  that  all  officers 
appointed  by  and  with  the  advice  and  consent 
of  the  Senate  could  be  dismissed  only  with  the 
consent  of  the  Senate.  It  was  certainly  the 
constitutional  right  of  the  houses  of  Congress 
to  overcome  the  President's  objection  to  legis 
lative  projects  passed  by  them,  whenever  they 
could  unite  two-thirds  of  the  members  voting 
in  each  house,  a  majority  being  present  in 
each,  against  the  President's  veto.  The  Presi 
dent  did  not  dispute  this,  but  his  contention 
upon  this  point  was  that  the  houses,  by  refus- 


10        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

ing  to  admit  members  from  the  States  recon 
structed  by  him,  had  been  able  to  command 
a  majority  against  his  vetoes,  which  they  could 
not  have  done  had  all  the  persons  lawfully 
elected  been  admitted  to  seats.  The  President 
substantially  claimed  that  Congress  was  a  rump 
parliament,  although  he  did  not  express  his  con 
tention  exactly  in  these  words.  He  did,  how 
ever,  contend  that  the  Tenure  of  Office  Acts 
were  unconstitutional,  since,  although  the  Con 
stitution  was  silent  in  regard  to  dismissal  from 
office,  the  exclusive  responsibility  of  the  Presi 
dent  for  the  execution  of  the  laws  made  it  nec 
essary  that  he  should  exercise  the  power  of 
dismissal  at  his  own  discretion,  and  that  such 
had  been  the  usage  of  the  government  from  the 
beginning.  In  this  he  was  entirely  right,  and 
the  triumph  of  Congress  over  him  upon  this 
most  important  subject  introduced  a  demoral 
ization  into  the  civil  and  military  service  which 
spread  rapidly  in  all  directions. 

Congress  was,  however,  not  even  satisfied  with 
this.  It  now  assumed  to  limit  the  military 
power  of  the  President  by  incorporating  into 
the  Army  Appropriation  Bill  of  the  year  1867 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  11 

provisions  fixing  the  residence  of  the  command 
ing  general  of  the  army  at  Washington,  pro 
tecting  him  from  being  assigned  elsewhere  except 
at  his  own  request,  requiring  the  President  or 
Secretary  of  War  to  issue  all  orders  and  instruc 
tions  relating  to  military  operations  through 
him,  making  all  orders  and  instructions  issued 
in  any  other  way  null  and  void,  and  requiring 
the  infliction  of  punishment  upon  any  officer  dis 
obeying  this  regulation.  It  is  true  that  the  Presi 
dent  approved  the  Bill,  including  these  provi 
sions,  in  order  to  save  the  appropriation  for  the 
army,  but  they,  nevertheless,  meant  the  curtail 
ment  of  the  constitutional  powers  of  the  execu 
tive  by  an  altogether  unconstitutional  legislative 
encroachment,  and  that,  too,  at  the  most  vital 
point,  viz.:  the  function  of  commandership-in- 
chief  of  the  armed  forces. 

This  control  now  assumed  by  Congress  over 
the  civil  and  military  service  advanced  rapidly 
towards  its  logical  results.  These  results  were 
of  two  general  kinds.  The  first  was  the  over 
turning  of  the  check-and-balance  system  of  gov 
ernment  provided  in  the  Constitution,  and  the 
substitution  of  the  parliamentary  system  for  it. 


12        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

The  Tenure  of  Office  Acts  provided,  among 
other  things,  that  the  members  of  the  Cabinet 
should  hold  their  offices  during  the  term  of  the 
President  appointing  them,  and  for  one  month 
after,  unless  sooner  removed  by  and  with  the 
consent  of  the  Senate.  Inasmuch  as  the  Senate 
now  claimed  also  a  real  discretionary  power  in 
the  ratification  of  the  appointments  to  the  Cab 
inet,  the  Tenure  of  Office  Acts  made  the  Cabinet 
something  more  like  the  ministry  in  parliamen 
tary  government  than  an  informal  body  of  the 
heads  of  departments  subject  entirely  to  the 
President's  commands,  which  was  its  constitu 
tional  character. 

The  struggle  of  Stanton  to  hold  on  to  the 
secretaryship  of  war  by  the  support  of  Con 
gress,  but  against  the  will  of  the  President, 
threatened  for  a  time  to  completely  subordinate 
the  executive  to  the  legislature.  The  move 
ment  culminated  in  the  attempt  to  remove  the 
President  from  office  by  impeachment.  Had 
this  succeeded,  and  it  came  dangerously  near 
to  it,  the  check-and-balance  system  provided  by 
the  Constitution,  the  American  system  of  inde 
pendent  and  co-ordinate  departments  in  gov- 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  13 

eminent,  would  have  been  completely  set  aside, 
and  Congress  would  have  changed  the  Cabinet 
into  a  ministry,  subject  to  the  will  of  the  Con 
gressional  majority  in  the  administration  of  the 
government.  As  it  was,  President  Johnson 
never  recovered  thereafter  the  exercise  of  the 
full  constitutional  powers  of  the  executive.  He 
went  out  of  office  with  the  distinct  knowledge 
that  the  constitutional  position  of  the  executive 
had  been  degraded  through  the  arbitrary  tyranny 
exercised  over  it  by  the  extraordinary  Repub 
lican  majority  in  Congress,  bent  upon  robbing 
him  of  all  power  to  limit  their  control  over  the 
administration.  Naturally,  upon  the  accession 
of  President  Grant,  Congress  modified  some 
what  its  attitude  towards  the  executive,  and  the 
diminishing  Republican  majority  in  Congress 
ultimately  deprived  the  dominant  party  of  the 
strength  to  carry  out  its  policy  of  parliamentary 
control  over  the  administration.  Nevertheless 
the  precedents  established  during  the  term  of 
President  Johnson  exerted  a  baleful  influence 
during  the  entire  eight  years  of  the  presidency 
of  General  Grant. 
It  was,  however,  in  the  other  direction,  in  the 


14        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

control  of  the  tenure  of  the  officials,  both  as  to 
its  origin  and  termination,  that  the  sway  of 
Congress,  or  rather  of  the  members  of  Congress, 
developed  during  the  presidency  of  General 
Grant  into  most  harmful  and  corrupting  pro 
portions.  President  Grant  was  a  poor  judge  of 
men  except  only  as  to  military  qualifications. 
He  made  strong  friendships  upon  insufficient 
grounds.  He  was  loyal  to  his  friends.  And  he 
was  trustful  of  the  honesty  and  purposes  of  those 
to  whom  he  had  given  his  confidence.  He  was 
just  the  character  to  be  played  upon  by  design 
ing  politicians.  His  experiences  in  opposition 
to  President  Johnson  had  betrayed  him  into  the 
hands  of  the  Republican  Stalwarts,  and  had 
made  him  amenable  to  their  methods.  The 
scheme  of  party  organization  which  the  Repub 
licans  had  worked  out  with  the  purpose  of  main 
taining  the  permanent  supremacy  of  the  party 
was  ingenious  and  not  altogether  artificial.  It 
was  quite  impossible  for  the  President  to  deter 
mine  from  his  own  personal  acquaintance  how  to 
fill  properly  the  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands 
of  offices  under  his  power  of  appointment,  and 
it  was  an  unwritten  usage  that  the  federal  offi- 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  15 

cers  should  be  taken  from  the  respective  locali 
ties  in  which  they  might  serve.  It  was  natural, 
therefore,  that  the  President  should  turn  to  his 
party  adherents  in  Congress,  not  as  a  body,  but 
separately,  to  suggest  to  him  proper  persons  to 
fill  the  federal  offices  within  their  respective 
localities.  It  is  also  comprehensible  how  the 
members  of  Congress  should  gradually  come  to 
regard  their  solicited  advice  by  and  to  the  Presi 
dent  as  obligatory  on  the  President,  and  finally 
to  regard  the  solicitation  of  such  advice  by  the 
President  as  a  right  of  theirs  to  be  consulted,  a 
right  attaching  to  their  positions.  The  Con 
gress  had  the  power  to  make  good  these  claims 
of  its  separate  members  through  its  power  to 
reduce  to  a  minimum  the  offices  filled  without 
the  advice  and  consent  of  the  Senate,  and 
through  the  power  of  the  Senate  to  reject  nomi 
nations  made  to  it  by  the  President  not  recom 
mended  by  the  respective  Congressional  mem 
bers  entitled,  in  the  view  of  the  party  majority 
in  the  Senate,  to  be  consulted  in  such  nomina 
tions. 

By  1870  the  system  of  appointment  to  the 
federal  offices  had  reached  a  development  which 


16        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

may  be  roughly  stated  as  follows:  The  senators 
from  each  State,  if  they  happened  to  be  of  the 
same  party  with  the  President,  and  could  agree 
between  themselves,  furnished  the  President 
with  the  names  of  the  persons  to  be  nominated 
to  the  Senate  by  the  President  for  the  higher 
federal  offices  within  the  State.  If  they  could 
not  agree  in  each  and  every  case,  a  rough  sort 
of  distribution  was  made  between  them  by  the 
President.  If  only  one  of  the  two  senators  was 
of  the  same  party  with  the  President,  then  the 
entire  patronage  of  the  higher  federal  offices 
within  his  State  fell  to  him.  To  each  member 
of  the  House  of  Representatives,  of  the  same 
party  with  the  President,  fell  the  patronage  of 
the  lower  federal  offices  within  his  Congressional 
district.  In  case  of  the  representation  of  the 
district  by  a  member  not  of  the  same  party  with 
the  President,  the  patronage  of  the  lower  federal 
offices  within  that  district  fell  to  the  represen 
tatives  from  other  districts  of  the  State  in  which 
that  district  lay,  who  might  be  of  the  same 
party  with  the  President.  In  case  there  should 
be  no  representative  from  a  particular  State  of 
the  same  political  party  with  the  President,  then 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  17 

the  patronage  of  the  lower  federal  offices  within 
that  State  fell  to  the  senators  or  senator  from 
that  State,  provided  they  or  one  of  them  might 
be  of  the  same  party  with  the  President.  The 
President's  independent  power  of  nomination 
was  thus  reduced  to  the  federal  offices  within 
States  not  represented  in  either  house  of  Con 
gress  by  members  of  the  same  political  party 
with  himself.  The  senators  had  even  come  to 
the  point  of  considering  that  they  should  be  con 
sulted  in  the  selection  by  the  President  of  the 
members  of  his  Cabinet. 

This  body  of  federal  office-holders  had  now 
also  become  the  leading  personalities  in  the 
party  organization.  They  dominated  and  con 
trolled  and  officered  the  caucuses  and  the  local, 
State,  and  national  conventions  of  the  party. 
They  spent  about  as  much  time  and  energy  in 
managing  the  party  organization  and  its  affairs 
as  in  administering  the  duties  of  their  offices. 
In  fact,  the  names  of  many  persons  were  car 
ried  on  the  official  pay-rolls  who  did  nothing 
except  manage  the  affairs  of  the  party.  It 
must  be,  also,  kept  in  mind  that  at  this  period 
of  our  history  party  organization  and  manage- 


18        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

ment  had  not  been  subjected  to  law.  It  was  at 
that  time  regarded  as  a  principle  of  American 
liberty  that  it  should  not  be.  It  was  considered 
that  this  was  a  realm  of  free  action.  All  men 
of  voting  age  and  capacity,  it  was  argued,  had 
the  same  right  of  political  organization,  and  if 
they  failed  to  make  use  of  it,  it  was  their  own 
fault,  and  that  the  best  way  to  bring  them  to  a 
sense  of  their  negligence  was  to  let  them  suffer 
the  consequences  of  their  negligence.  The  party 
managers  fixed  thus  the  time  of  meeting,  the 
place  of  meeting,  and  the  procedure  of  the  cau 
cuses  and  conventions,  and  made  the  common 
voters  simply  heelers.  The  vicious  circle  was 
thus  completed.  The  congressmen  appointed 
the  federal  officers,  and  fixed  and  voted  their 
pay,  and  the  federal  officers,  through  their  con 
trol  of  the  party,  elected  the  congressmen  and 
kept  them  in  position.  The  federal  officers  col 
lected  the  party  funds  by  a  system  of  assess 
ment  among  themselves  and  of  solicitation  from 
the  voters,  or  certain  of  the  voters,  and  these 
contributors  came  in  usually  for  some  sort  of  a 
reward,  either  in  the  form  of  office,  or  conces 
sion,  or  rake-off. 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  19 

In  order  to  prevent  dissension  within  the 
party  and  to  assign  to  each  worker  his  duty  and 
reward,  some  one  person  was  advanced,  through 
a  sort  of  process  of  natural  selection,  to  the 
position  of  party  leadership  in  the  different  dis 
tricts  and  States.  This  was  the  boss,  the  cap 
stone  of  party  organization,  in  the  decade  pre 
ceding  1876. 

So  soon  as  General  Grant  succeeded  to  the 
presidency  he  began  to  feel  the  cramp  of  the 
situation  and  to  rebel  against  it.  He  secured  a 
modification  of  the  Tenure  of  Office  Acts,  which 
gave  him  a  little  freer  hand,  and  in  his  annual 
message  of  December,  1870,  he  recommended  a 
reform  of  the  civil  service.  President  Grant 
designated  the  existing  system  as  "an  abuse  of 
long  standing,"  and  declared  that  he  wished  a 
reform  applicable  not  only  to  subordinate  offices, 
but  one  which  should  "govern  the  manner  of 
making  all  appointments."  He  wished  not  only 
to  remove  the  relation  of  the  congressmen  to 
the  officers  of  the  administration,  but  also  to 
relieve  himself  and  his  heads  of  departments 
from  an  intolerable  burden. 

Under  pressure  from  the  President,  Congress 


20         THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

passed  the  Act  of  1871,  authorizing  the  Presi 
dent  to  establish  a  civil-service  commission, 
and  making  an  appropriation  for  its  expenses. 
The  President  lost  no  time  in  the  appointment 
of  the  members  of  the  commission,  and  they 
lost  no  time  in  setting  up  a  system  of  competi 
tive  examinations  for  the  offices.  Almost  im 
mediately  the  character  of  the  public  service 
began  to  improve,  too  rapidly  to  suit  the  con 
gressmen,  who  saw  their  patronage  and  the 
means  of  controlling  the  nominations  and  elec 
tions  slipping  away  from  them.  By  1874  the 
Congressional  revolt  against  the  new  system  was 
strong  enough  to  refuse  the  annual  appropria 
tion  to  defray  the  expenses  of  the  commission, 
and  before  the  end  of  President  Grant's  second 
term  the  official  service  was  back  in  the  old  ruts 
of  1870.  Inefficiency,  graft,  and  corruption 
crept  in  everywhere  and  brought  scandal  upon 
the  administration  from  top  to  bottom.  Even 
the  Secretary  of  War  fell  under  such  strong  sus 
picion  that  he  was  obliged  to  resign  in  great 
haste  his  high  office  in  order  to  escape  impeach 
ment  by  the  House  of  Representatives,  which  by 
the  elections  of  1874  had  fallen  into  the  hands  of 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  21 

the  Democrats.  Star  Route,  Credit  Mobilier, 
and  the  Whiskey  Ring  are  terms  which  will 
always  be  connected  in  our  history  with  the 
venality,  or  at  least  the  generally  believed 
venality,  of  the  Republican  party  and  the  Re 
publican  administration  in  the  year  1876. 

The  economic  and  financial  systems  of  the 
country  had  fallen  into  no  less  confusion  and 
viciousness.  The  long  war  and  the  spirit  of  ad 
venture  developed  by  it  had  produced  an  era 
of  reckless  speculation.  This  was  encouraged 
by  the  existence  of  opportunities  for  its  indul 
gence  never  before  at  hand.  These  opportuni 
ties  consisted,  first,  in  the  railway  situation  and 
extension;  secondly,  in  the  land-grabbing  game; 
thirdly,  in  the  discovery  of  the  mining  wealth  of 
the  Rockies;  and,  fourthly,  in  the  condition  of 
the  public  debt  and  the  currency. 

In  the  first  place,  the  distinction  was  still  to 
be  made  in  our  law  between  public-service  cor 
porations  and  purely  private  corporations,  and 
the  system  of  governmental  control  of  the 
former  was  still  to  be  worked  out.  As  a  rule, 
charters  were  granted  to  favored  persons,  and 
they  were  left  to  their  own  devices  as  to  how 


22        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

they  might  exploit  the  rights  and  privileges 
granted  in  them  to  their  own  private  advantage 
without  any  regard  to  the  primary  interests  of 
the  public.  They  were  allowed  to  float  stocks 
and  bonds  at  will,  and  in  many  cases  the  bonds 
of  municipalities  and  States,  and  in  one  noted 
case  the  bonds  of  the  United  States,  were  given 
to  them  either  outright  or  under  a  method  of 
loan,  which  amounted  to  nearly  the  same  thing. 
Vast  areas  of  public  land  along  their  routes  were 
also  given  to  them.  The  natural  and  inevitable 
results  of  all  this  were  the  overbuilding  of  rail 
roads,  the  inflation  of  the  capital  invested  in 
them  by  the  overissue  of  stocks  and  bonds, 
the  management  of  the  roads  for  the  purely 
private  enrichment  of  the  managers,  discrim 
ination  in  rates  between  places  and  between 
shippers,  declaration  of  dividends  without  re 
gard  to  earnings,  wild  and  artificial  speculation 
in  the  stocks  so  manipulated,  and  certain  loss 
or  even  bankruptcy  in  the  end. 

The  opening  up  of  the  public  lands  to  private 
occupation  on  a  scale  never  before  experienced 
and  the  placing  of  mines  by  the  discoverers  of 
the  mineral  wealth  of  the  new  country  were 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  23 

things  no  less  conducive  to  reckless  speculation 
than  the  railroad  situation.  Everybody  was 
grabbing  the  public  land  under  every  possible 
subterfuge,  and  even  boasting  of  his  shrewd 
ness  in  outwitting  government  and  law  in  doing 
so,  while  the  exchanges  were  glutted  with  the 
shares  of  mining  stocks,  many  of  them  worth 
less  and  some  of  them  simply  bogus.  The  get- 
rich-quick  bacillus  had  entered  every  man's 
blood,  and  had  poisoned  the  brain  and  de 
stroyed  the  conscience  of  all  too  many. 

To  all  this  as  universal  incentive  came  the 
monetary  situation,  the  debt  and  the  currency 
problems.  The  war  had  left  a  debt  upon  the 
United  States  Government  alone,  to  say  nothing 
of  the  States  and  municipalities,  of  nearly  three 
thousand  millions  of  dollars,  and  an  irredeema 
ble  paper  currency  of  over  four  hundred  millions 
of  dollars.  President  Johnson's  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury,  Mr.  Hugh  M'Culloch,  was  a  sound 
financier,  and  he  strove  earnestly  and  success 
fully  to  reduce  the  debt  and  the  volume  of  the 
paper  currency,  but  Congress  stopped  his  work 
as  to  the  latter  by  the  law  of  1868,  and  fixed  the 
volume  of  the  greenbacks,  as  this  currency  was 


24        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

called,  at  three  hundred  and  fifty-six  millions  of 
dollars,  and  made  no  provision  for  its  redemp 
tion.  Down  to  1870,  it  was  still  an  open  ques 
tion  whether  the  Supreme  Court  would  hold  the 
legal-tender  quality  ascribed  by  Congress  to 
these  notes  to  be  in  accordance  with  the  Consti 
tution.  In  that  year  the  Court  pronounced 
against  it,  and  then  in  another  case,  after  the 
addition  of  two  members  known  to  be  favorable 
to  the  greenbacks,  it  reversed  its  decision  and 
fastened  upon  our  monetary  system  a  legal- 
tender  paper  currency  which  contained  no  pro 
vision  for  its  present  or  future  redemption  in 
coin.  These  performances  of  the  Supreme  Court, 
and  these  acts  of  the  administration  in  so  chang 
ing  its  membership  as  to  bring  them  about,  pro 
duced  a  judicial  scandal,  which  increased,  most 
harmfully,  the  confusion  of  the  age  in  regard  to 
the  standards  of  morality  and  law.  The  final 
decision  of  the  Court  was  a  great  encouragement 
to  the  party  which  favored  the  expansion  of  the 
greenback  currency  to  any  degree  which,  in  the 
judgment  of  the  government,  the  business  of  the 
country  might  require,  and  the  payment  of  all 
public,  as  well  as  private,  debts  in  such  cur- 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  25 

rency,  unless  otherwise  expressly  stipulated  in 
the  evidence  of  the  debt  itself  or  in  the  law  under 
which  it  had  been  created. 

The  situation  favored  and  increased,  also,  spec 
ulation  in  the  coin  metals,  making  prices  of 
commodities  not  only  high,  but  uncertain  and 
irregular.  And  to  all  this  came  now  the  silver 
question,  or  the  question  of  the  relation  between 
gold  and  silver  as  the  coin  basis  of  our  monetary 
system.  After  1853,  and  down  to  1873,  the  fact 
that,  under  the  legal  ratio  between  gold  and  silver 
coin,  the  gold  dollar  was  worth  less  than  the  sil 
ver  dollar  had  driven  the  silver  dollar  out  of  cir 
culation  and  had  made  the  gold  dollar  the  stand 
ard  of  our  money.  By  the  act  of  Congress  of 
1873,  it  was  ordered  that  no  more  silver  dollars 
should  be  minted  for  our  domestic  use,  but  that 
a  silver  dollar  containing  more  grains  of  the 
metal  should  be  coined  for  our  foreign  trade. 
By  this  time,  however,  the  discoveries  of  the 
new  silver  mines  in  the  Rockies  were  depreciat 
ing,  by  greatly  increased  supply,  the  value  of 
silver  as  compared  with  gold,  and  the  demon 
etization  of  silver  by  one  of  the  great  European 
states  worked  at  the  same  time  in  the  same  di- 


26         THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

rection.  It  was  stipulated  in  the  larger  part  of 
bonded  indebtedness  that  both  principal  and 
rest  were  payable  in  coin.  Disregarding  the 
that  coin  had,  since  1853,  meant  practically 
gold,  al%f y  large  party  now  rapidly  formed  itself 
which  de&^nded  the  free  coinage  of  silver  as 
legal-tender  Sfeney  at  the  existing  legal  ratio  be 
tween  it  and  gold,  and  the  payment  of  all  our 
indebtedness  requiring  coin  payment  with  such 
coin.  It  was  argued  by  both  the  greenback  and 
free-silver  adherents  that  in  no  part  of  our 
bonded  indebtedness  was  there  any  mention  of 
gold,  but  of  coin,  and  that  silver  was  lawful  coin 
at  the  time  of  the  creation  of  the  debt,  and  had 
always  been  coin  in  the  United  States  down  to 
1873,  when  it  had  been  demonetized  in  the  un 
just  interest  of  the  creditor  class.  They  claimed 
that  the  United  States  would  not  only  fulfil 
every  legal  and  moral  obligation  by  paying  its 
stipulated  coin  debt  in  silver,  but  was  bound 
to  do  so  in  the  interest  of  our  own  people,  be 
cause  the  great  mass  of  our  people  belonged  to 
the  debtor  class.  They  pointed  out  that  the 
laborer  and  the  salaried  man,  who  constituted 
the  vast  majority  of  the  people,  received  their 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  27 

pay  in  greenbacks,  while  the  bondholder  received 
his  interest  in  gold  coin,  and  they  demanded 
that  there  should  be  one  and  the  same  cun 
for  the  laborer  and  the  bondholder, 
manded  it  in  the  name  of  justice  andjjlmianity. 
The  free  coinage  of  silver  legal-temer  money, 
at  the  legal  ratio  between  silyej^nd  gold  pre 
vailing  in  1873,  it  was  declared,  would  bring 
about  this  result  and  at  the  same  time  redeem 
our  pledges  of  coin  indebtedness,  and  it  was 
maintained  that  our  right  to  pay  our  indebted 
ness  in  silver  coin  would  not  have  been  ques 
tioned  except  for  the  monstrous  and  iniquitous 
measure  of  1873  demonetizing  silver. 

This  reasoning  and  these  representations  were 
so  universally  embraced  by  the  masses  that  they 
produced  a  veritable  craze.  Any  man  who  did 
not  accept  them  was  denounced  as  inhuman  as 
well  as  immoral,  as  the  defender  of  the  rich 
against  the  poor,  as  the  upholder  of  plutocracy 
against  democracy.  The  Republican  party  was 
accused,  and  not  without  reason,  of  favoring 
privilege.  In  1874  it  still  held  control  of  both 
houses  of  Congress,  while  the  elections  of  1874 
gave  the  House  of  Representatives  in  the  next 


28        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

Congress,  by  large  majority,  to  the  Democrats. 
The  Republicans  now  hurried  through  Con 
gress  the  famous  resumption  of  specie  pay 
ments  measure  at  the  beginning  of  the  year 
1875.  This  meant  the  redemption  of  the  paper 
currency  in  coin,  on  presentation  at  the  United 
States  Treasury  after  a  given  time,  viz.:  Jan 
uary  1,  1879.  It  did  not  thus  affect  the  silver 
question,  but  only  the  paper-money  question, 
and  Mr.  Bland  was  preparing  his  noted  Free 
Silver  Bill  at  almost  the  same  moment.  This 
Bland  Bill  was  passed  by  the  succeeding  Demo 
cratic  house  by  an  overwhelming  majority, 
and  fairly  reflected  the  views  and  wishes  of  a 
vast  majority  of  the  people  of  the  country. 
Add  to  all  this  the  fact  that  the  situation,  polit 
ical  and  economic,  of  the  country  had  produced 
the  great  monetary  panic  of  1873,  and  the  hard 
times  of  the  years  immediately  following,  with 
so  great  a  depression  in  the  labor  market  as  to 
cause  great  suffering  and  unrest,  and  you  have 
sufficient  grounds  for  claiming  that  in  the  minds 
of  the  great  mass  of  the  people  the  time  had 
come  for  some  radical  change  in  the  ordering  of 
our  affairs,  since  otherwise  we  should  find  our- 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  29 

selves  entering  upon  the  road  of  national  de 
cline. 

In  eras  of  institutional  collapse  the  demand  is 
always  felt  for  the  leadership  of  a  great  person 
ality.  The  leadership  of  such  a  personality  is 
the  only  way  of  escape  from  institutional  de 
cadence,  followed  by  social  decadence.  In  the 
year  1876  the  instinct  of  the  American  people 
and  of  their  leaders  went  out  in  search  of  such 
a  personality,  and  when  that  instinct  is  thor 
oughly  aroused  and  terribly  in  earnest,  it  is 
usually  unerring. 

The  galaxy  of  prominent  men  from  whom  to 
choose  was  never  fuller.  There  was  the  great 
soldier,  the  popular  hero,  who  had  already  ad 
ministered  the  government  for  eight  years.  But 
his  success  as  a  civil  officer  had  not  at  all 
equalled  that  as  a  military  leader.  His  choice 
for  a  third  time  would  conflict  with  the  Amer 
ican  principle  against  perpetual  service.  And, 
finally,  his  own  private  character  had  not  en 
tirely  escaped  the  scandal  which  had  borne  down 
so  many  of  his  subordinates.  It  was  clear  that 
General  Grant  was  not  the  man  whom  the  ne 
cessities  of  the  hour  demanded. 


SO        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

Then  there  was  the  sturdy,  judicious,  pru 
dent  Secretary  of  State,  Mr.  Fish,  who  had  man 
aged  our  foreign  affairs  with  such  ability,  adroit 
ness,  firmness,  and  success  throughout  a  critical 
period.  He  was  upright  and  courteous  as  a 
man,  and  without  a  blemish  upon  his  official 
character,  and,  besides  his  experience  in  the 
great  diplomatic  office,  he  had  made  an  excellent 
governor  of  the  great  State  of  New  York.  But 
he  was  now  too  old  to  undertake  the  strain  of 
the  presidential  office,  too  much  identified  with 
Grantism,  as  it  was  called,  and  too  rich  and 
aristocratic  to  understand  the  feelings,  suffer 
ings,  and  aspirations  of  the  masses. 

Then  there  was  the  brilliant,  jovial,  popular 
Blaine  of  Maine,  the  hail-fellow-well-met  in  poli 
tics  as  in  everything  else,  the  Henry  Clay  of  his 
generation,  idolized  by  his  friends  and  hated  by 
his  foes.  But  he  had  had  no  administrative 
experience  save  of  a  quasi  sort  as  speaker  of  the 
House  of  Representatives .  He  had  been  smirched 
in  the  Credit  Mobilier  matter.  And  he,  too,  was 
thought  to  be  allied  with  the  "interests." 

Then  there  was  the  arrogant  and  autocratic 
Conkling,  master  of  sarcasm  and  invective, 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  31 

shrewd  wire-puller  and  politician,  feared  by 
many  and  loved  by  few,  the  right-hand  man  of 
President  Grant  in  Congress,  probably  unap 
proachable  with  money,  but  entirely  uncon 
scionable  in  the  employment  of  the  bribe  of 
office  for  the  maintenance  of  party  organization. 
His  qualifications  for  the  presidency  were  not 
such  that  they  need  now  to  have  any  disquali 
fications  set  off  against  them. 

Then  there  was  Morton,  the  great  war  gov 
ernor  of  Indiana,  a  tried  and  proved  politician 
and  administrator,  undoubted  patriot,  and  above 
all  suspicion  as  to  financial  honesty,  one  of  the 
chief  founders  and  supporters  of  the  Republican 
party.  But  there  were  rumors  about  dissolute 
ness  in  private  life,  and  it  was  evident  that  he 
was  failing  physically. 

Then  there  was  Bristow,  Grant's  Secretary  of 
the  Treasury,  who  had  made  himself  noted  in  the 
prosecution  of  the  Whiskey  Ring,  and  who  was 
regarded  as  the  one  real  reformer  of  the  Grant 
administration.  But  he  was  comparatively  a 
new  man,  and  he  came  from  a  State  south  of 
the  Ohio.  He  had  not  been  sufficiently  tried  and 
tested  for  the  great  place  at  this  critical  juncture. 


32        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

Then  there  were  Hartranft,  the  soldier-gov 
ernor  of  the  great  State  of  Pennsylvania,  and 
the  genial  Marshall  Jewell,  of  Connecticut,  and 
the  wise  political  manager  and  compromiser  of 
differences,  W.  H.  Wheeler,  of  New  York,  to  all 
of  whom  failed,  in  some  point  or  other,  the  full- 
rounded  life,  experience,  character,  acquire 
ments,  and  reputation  which  the  exigencies  of 
the  period  and  the  critical  state  of  affairs  de 
manded. 

But  happily  for  the  country,  and  I  may  say 
for  the  world,  there  was  such  a  man,  and,  as  had 
happened  before  in  the  history  of  our  country, 
he  hailed  from  Ohio,  the  State  of  great  leaders 
both  in  war  and  in  peace.  He  was  a  native- 
born  son  of  Ohio,  of  the  sturdy  Scotch-New 
England  stock;  an  orphan  from  birth  on  the 
father's  side,  and  to  his  mother,  therefore,  not 
only  a  devoted  son  but  a  helper  and  guide;  a 
dutiful  and  affectionate  nephew  of  the  best  uncle 
who  ever  lived;  a  loving  brother;  the  model 
husband  of  a  noble  woman,  whom  he  himself 
designated  as  "the  incarnation  of  the  golden 
rule,"  and  the  fond  and  anxious  father  of  a 
household  of  children,  all  of  whom  have,  in  their 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  33 

lives  and  services,  rewarded  his  paternal  care; 
a  thoughtful,  considerate,  and  helpful  neighbor; 
a  patriotic,  zealous,  and  generous  fellow  citizen, 
and  a  Christian  gentleman  of  blameless  life, 
courteous  manners,  and  universal  sympathy. 
Here  was  that  broad  foundation  of  personal  and 
domestic  virtue,  of  old-fashioned,  genuine  worth, 
upon  which  to  build  public  character,  intellec 
tual  and  moral,  of  the  finest  fibre,  strength,  and 
firmness.  And  he  had  built  it  continuously, 
expansively,  and  successfully.  In  college  he 
was,  I  need  not  tell  you,  the  valedictorian  of  his 
class,  great  especially  in  logic,  philosophy,  and 
mathematics  and  in  oratory  and  debate  —  the 
sterling  things,  not  the  softs  —  always  seeking  to 
conquer  the  difficult  and  avoiding  the  effect  of 
the  easy.  In  the  law  school  he  was,  on  account 
of  his  mastery  of  the  knotty  points  and  his 
philosophic  view  of  the  whole  domain  of  juris 
prudence,  a  favorite  pupil  of  Story  and  Green- 
leaf,  and  the  like.  As  legal  adviser  of  the  gov 
ernment  of  a  large  and  growing  city  he  had 
labored  always  with  assiduity  and  success  to 
prevent  graft,  check  extravagance,  maintain 
harmony  of  action,  and  promote  municipal  wel- 


34        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

fare.  As  a  member  of  Congress,  although  for 
only  a  short  time,  he  displayed  legislative  ability 
and  tact,  and  acquired  the  necessary  law 
maker's  view-point  of  public  questions.  But  it 
was  as  an  administrator  in  war  and  peace  that 
he  had  manifested  his  greatest  ability  and  re 
ceived  his  most  valuable  experience  and  edu 
cation  for  the  great  office  which  destiny  held  in 
store  for  him.  As  a  brave  and  efficient  soldier 
throughout  the  entire  Civil  War,  beginning  as 
major  of  his  regiment  and  mounting  to  the  posi 
tion  of  a  general  of  division,  he  learned  both 
how  to  obey  and  command,  how  to  suffer  and 
grow  strong,  how  to  put  duty  and  country  above 
life  and  self.  And  finally  as  three  times  governor 
of  this  great  State  of  statesmen,  he  schooled  him 
self  in  the  work  of  civil  administration  upon  a 
large  and  exacting  scale  for  the  executive  lead 
ership  of  the  nation.  In  all  his  public  acts  and 
utterances,  while  a  stanch  Republican  from 
the  foundation  of  the  party,  he  had  never  lost 
his  balance,  had  never  been  touched  by  any  of 
its  excesses  or  its  errors,  but  had  always  stood 
upon  its  fundamental  principles  and  had  known 
how  to  apply  them  correctly  to  the  details  of 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  35 

political  and  economic  life.  He  upheld  loyally 
the  amendments  to  the  Constitution  won  by 
the  nation's  victory  in  arms,  but  his  manly 
sympathy  for  the  suffering  South  was  well 
known.  He  was  also  of  national  reputation  as 
the  invincible  foe  of  all  graft  and  corruption  in 
politics,  and  all  heresies  in  economy  and  finance. 
He  had  beaten  on  the  hustings  and  at  the  polls 
the  three  most  popular  Democrats  of  Ohio  be 
cause  of  their  unsoundness  on  the  monetary 
question.  If  any  man  in  the  United  States 
could  at  that  time  be  called  the  leader  in  the 
struggle  for  civil-service  reform,  honorable  public 
finance,  and  sound  money,  it  was  he.  Many 
of  the  best  men  of  the  country  were  well  ac 
quainted  with  these  facts,  and  had  marked 
him  as  the  coming  man. 

When  the  national  convention  of  the  Repub 
lican  party  assembled  in  June  of  1876  at  Cin 
cinnati  the  seriousness  of  the  situation  was 
thoroughly  realized,  and  the  determination  to 
meet  it  successfully  possessed  every  mind. 
This  was  not  so  clearly  manifested  in  the  plat 
form,  but  when  it  came  to  the  nominations,  the 
body  threw  aside  one  after  another  of  the  candi- 


36  PRESIDENT  HAYES 

dates,  Elaine,  Morton,  Conkling,  Bristow,  and 
the  rest,  and  gravitated  surely  and  continuously, 
as  if  driven  by  a  higher  power,  to  the  right  man, 
the  man  who  by  force  of  his  upright  character, 
unblemished  reputation,  intelligent  and  sound 
public  views,  judicious  management  and  firm 
will  was  called  by  more  than  human  appoint 
ment  to  lead  the  Republican  party  out  of  its 
devious  ways  into  a  new  path  of  victory,  use 
fulness,  and  continued  supremacy,  the  noblest 
son  of  this  noble  institution,  the  valedictorian 
of  its  class  of  1842,  the  governor  of  the  great 
State  of  Ohio,  Rutherford  Birchard  Hayes. 


LECTURE  II 

THE  ELECTION  OF  1876  AND  THE 
INAUGURATION 

THE  law  of  election  of  the  President  of 
the  United  States  was,  in  1876,  and  still 
is,  a  very  complicated  matter,  and  un 
derstood  with  exactness  by  very  few  persons. 
It  is  composed  of  two  elements,  the  one  is  State 
law,  and  the  other  United  States  law.  The  State 
law  controls  exclusively  the  election  of  the  elec 
tors  of  the  President,  and  the  United  States  law 
controls  exclusively  the  election  of  the  President 
by  the  electors,  but  both  the  State  law  and  the 
United  States  law  are  contained  in,  or  based  on, 
the  provisions  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States. 

The  power  of  the  State  to  select  the  electors 
is  vested  in  it  expressly  by  the  Constitution  of 
the  United  States.  The  language  of  the  vest 
ing  clause  is  as  follows:  "Each  State  shall  ap 
point,  in  such  manner  as  the  legislature  thereof 

37 


38        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

may  direct,  a  number  of  electors,  equal  to  the 
whole  number  of  senators  and  representatives 
to  which  the  State  may  be  entitled  in  the  Con 
gress."  The  power  of  the  State  as  to  the  man 
ner  of  selecting  the  electors  is  thus  vested  by  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States  in  the  legis 
lature  of  that  State,  and  there  is,  therefore,  no 
power  in  the  State  to  limit  or  control  its  legis 
lature  in  the  slightest  degree  in  regard  to  that 
matter,  or  to  order  the  manner  of  selecting  the 
electors  to  be  fixed  by  any  other  body.  Even 
an  article  of  the  State  constitution  directing 
otherwise  would  be  of  no  force  or  effect  what 
soever.  The  Constitution  of  the  United  States 
itself  lays  only  one  limitation  on  the  power  of 
the  State  legislature  to  control  absolutely  and 
exclusively  the  manner  of  selecting  the  electors, 
and  that  is  a  disqualification  of  any  member  of 
Congress,  or  any  holder  of  a  United  States  office 
of  trust  or  profit,  from  being  appointed  an  elec 
tor,  and  that  is  not  a  limitation  of  the  manner 
of  the  election,  but  as  to  the  qualification  of  the 
electors.  Under  this  power,  vested  by  the  Con 
stitution  of  the  United  States  in  the  legislature 
of  each  State,  the  legislature  may  appoint  the 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  39 

electors  itself,  or  designate  the  body  which  shall 
appoint  or  elect  them,  and  shall  determine  how 
that  selection  shall  be  effected  and  determined. 
It  is,  therefore,  possible  to  have  as  many  ways 
of  selecting  the  presidential  electors  as  there  are 
State  legislatures.  In  fact,  down  to  the  out 
break  of  the  Civil  War,  the  selection  of  the 
presidential  electors  in  all  the  States  had  not 
been  uniform,  not  even  as  to  the  body  selecting 
the  electors.  At  the  time  of  the  election  of 
1876,  the  practice  of  electing  the  electors  by  the 
voters  had  become  uniform  in  all  the  States,  but 
not  the  method  of  determining  how  the  choice 
should  be  exercised  by  the  voters  nor  how  the 
choice  should  be  declared.  For  example,  in  the 
States  upon  which  the  election  of  1876  turned, 
viz.:  Florida,  Louisiana,  South  Carolina,  and 
Oregon,  the  State  law  was  not  uniform.  In 
the  first  three  States,  the  respective  legislatures 
had  created  canvassing  boards,  and  vested  in 
them  not  only  the  power  to  count  and  declare 
the  result  of  the  vote,  but  also  the  power  to 
throw  out  the  returns  from  voting  precincts  in 
which,  according  to  the  belief  of  the  said  board, 
there  had  been  fraud,  violence,  or  intimidation, 


40        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

actual  or  threatened.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
legislature  of  the  State  of  Oregon  had  made  the 
Secretary  of  State  of  the  State  the  ultimate  can 
vassing  officer,  with  the  power  to  declare  the 
result  of  the  vote,  but  had  not  vested  in  him 
the  power  to  throw  out  the  returns  from  any 
precinct  for  any  reason. 

To  whom  the  declaration  of  the  result  of  the 
vote  for  the  electors  should  be  made  and  who 
should  give  the  official  certification  to  the  per 
sons  chosen  were  points  not  included  in  the 
power  vested  by  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  in  the  State  legislatures.  These  were, 
therefore,  points  to  be  fixed  by  United  States 
law,  and  as  the  constitutional  law  of  the  United 
States  did,  and  does,  not  fix  them  in  detail,  it  had 
to  be  done  by  a  Congressional  act.  The  then  ex 
isting  Congressional  act  (U.  S.  Revised  Statutes, 
Sees.  137-140)  designated  the  governor  of  each 
State  as  the  person  to  whom  the  ultimate  State 
canvassing  officer,  or  board,  should  make  decla 
ration  of  the  result  of  the  election  of  the  presi 
dential  electors,  and  laid  upon  the  governor  the 
duty  of  issuing  his  certificate  of  their  election  to 
the  electors,  and  upon  the  electors  the  duty  of 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  41 

enclosing  this  certificate  of  their  election  with 
the  report  of  the  votes  given  by  them  for  Presi 
dent  and  Vice-President  to  the  president  of  the 
Senate  of  the  United  States.  Back  to  this  point, 
then,  the  national  body  vested  by  the  Constitu 
tion  with  the  power  of  counting  the  vote  of  the 
electors  for  President  and  Vice-President  might 
go,  but  no  further.  That  is,  this  body  could, 
according  to  a  sound  interpretation  of  the  Con 
stitution  of  the  United  States,  go  behind  the 
governor's  certificate  in  determining  who  the 
true  presidential  electors  from  the  particular 
State  might  be,  but  not  behind  the  report  of  the 
State  canvassing  officer,  or  board,  to  the  gov 
ernor.  The  governor,  in  giving  his  certificate 
to  the  electors  attesting  their  choice,  was  acting 
under  United  States  law,  and  his  act  could, 
therefore,  be  inquired  into  by  the  national  or 
gan  for  counting  the  vote  of  the  electors.  The 
State  canvassing  boards  or  officers  were,  on  the 
other  hand,  acting  under  State  law,  and  their 
reports  must  be  received  with  the  effect  pre 
scribed  by  the  respective  State  legislatures,  as 
provided  by  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  itself.  Any  sound  constitutional  lawyer 


42        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

could  have  had  no  doubt  upon  that  point,  even 
before  the  elucidating  discussions  of  the  winter 
of  1876-7. 

What  the  national  organ  was  for  determining 
who,  in  case  of  conflicting  returns,  were  the  true 
presidential  electors  chosen  in  each  State,  and 
for  counting  their  votes  for  President  and  Vice- 
President,  was  not  so  clear.  The  national  Con 
stitution  simply  provided  that  the  electors 
chosen  in  each  State  should  sign,  certify,  and 
transmit  sealed  to  the  president  of  the  national 
Senate  the  lists  of  their  votes  for  President  and 
Vice-President,  and  that  the  president  of  the 
Senate  should,  in  the  presence  of  the  Senate 
and  the  House  of  Representatives,  open  these 
documents,  and  that  the  votes  should  then  be 
counted.  Down  to  1876  the  president  of  the 
Senate  had,  through  tellers  appointed  for  the 
purpose,  cast  up  the  reports  from  the  electoral 
colleges  in  the  different  States,  and  announced 
the  result,  for  although  there  had  been  instances 
of  conflicting  returns,  they  were  not  sufficient 
to  affect  the  result,  however  counted,  and  no  ne 
cessity  had,  therefore,  been  felt  for  determining 
which  were  the  correct  returns,  or  for  deciding 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  43 

what  organ  was  vested  by  the  Constitution  with 
the  power  of  determining  which  were  the  correct 
returns.  Since  the  election  of  1864  there  had 
existed  a  rule  adopted  by  each  house  of  Con 
gress  for  itself,  called  the  twenty-second  joint 
rule,  according  to  which  no  electoral  vote  could 
be  counted  from  any  State,  if  either  house  of 
Congress  should  vote  to  reject  it.  This  was, 
of  course,  a  very  crude  solution  of  the  question, 
as  it  gave  the  House  of  Representatives  the 
power  to  defeat  an  election  by  the  electors,  and 
then  alone  elect  the  President  and  Vice-President 
itself,  as  provided  by  the  Constitution  in  case 
of  the  failure  of  the  electors  to  make  the  choice. 
Consequently  the  Senate,  which  was  in  1876 
Republican,  while  the  House  was  Democratic, 
had  given  notice  before  the  count  of  the  vote  of 
the  election  of  that  year  came  on  that  it  would 
not  renew  the  rule. 

The  situation,  then,  was  as  follows:  It  was 
known  that  there  would  be  conflicting  returns 
from  at  least  four  States,  and  that  the  election 
would  turn  on  the  decision  in  regard  to  them; 
that  the  Senate  would  not  acquiesce  in  the  prop 
osition  that  the  House  of  Representatives  alone 


44        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

could  reject  the  returns  of  the  electoral  vote 
from  any  State;  that  the  president  of  the  Sen 
ate  was  a  Republican,  and  might  claim  to  de 
termine,  in  case  of  conflicting  returns,  which  set 
of  returns  from  any  State  was  to  be  counted; 
and  that  the  outgoing  President,  being  a  Repub 
lican,  would  probably  exercise  all  the  powers 
vested  in  him  by  the  Constitution  to  seat  the 
candidate  of  his  party  as  his  successor.  The 
Democrats  asserted  stoutly  that  they  had  won 
the  election,  but  they  did  not  feel  at  all  sure 
that,  as  things  stood,  their  candidates  would  be 
counted  in.  They  were,  therefore,  quite  willing 
to  join  in  the  passage  of  an  act  for  counting  the 
vote,  which  they  thought  would  commit  the 
Republicans,  and  could  hardly  fail  to  give  them, 
the  Democrats,  the  presidency.  In  fact,  it 
must  be  said  that  they  were  the  chief  authors 
of  the  act,  since  it  was  their  votes  which  carried 
it  through. 

This  statute  was  the  noted  Electoral  Commis 
sion  Act  of  January  29, 1877.  It  provided  that  a 
commission  of  fifteen  persons  should  be  selected: 
five  from  and  by  the  Senate,  five  from  and  by 
the  House  of  Representatives,  and  five  from  the 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  45 

Supreme  Court,  the  justices  of  the  first,  third, 
eighth,  and  ninth  circuits  being  designated  by 
the  act  and  authorized  to  select  the  fifth  justice 
from  among  the  other  members  of  the  Court; 
that  where  only  one  set  of  returns  appeared 
from  a  State,  the  votes  so  given  must  be  counted 
unless  otherwise  ordered  by  the  concurrent  ac 
tion  of  both  houses  of  Congress;  that  where 
conflicting  returns  appeared  from  any  State,  the 
same  should  be  referred  to  the  Commission,  and 
the  votes  contained  in  the  set  of  returns,  de 
cided  by  the  Commission  to  be  the  true  returns, 
should  be  counted,  unless  otherwise  ordered  by 
the  concurrent  action  of  both  houses  of  Con 
gress;  and  that  all  constitutional  or  legal  rights 
of  a  judicial  nature,  if  any,  to  question  the 
title  of  any  one  thus  declared  elected  President 
or  Vice-President  of  the  United  States  were 
reserved. 

The  principle  of  this  statute  was  that  the 
power  to  count  the  electoral  votes  from  the 
States  for  President  and  Vice-President  belonged 
to  the  two  houses  of  Congress  jointly,  and  exer 
cising  equal  weight,  and  the  difficulty  overcome 
by  the  Electoral  Commission  contrivance  was 


46        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

the   difficulty   of  two  bodies   exercising  equal 
weight  arriving  at  a  conclusion. 

The  Democrats  needed  to  obtain  only  one 
electoral  vote  from  the  four  States  presenting 
conflicting  returns  to  elect  their  candidates. 
The  Republicans,  therefore,  must  obtain  every 
electoral  vote  from  all  four  of  these  States  in 
order  to  elect  their  candidates.  The  prospect 
seemed  on  the  surface  fair  for  the  Democrats, 
and  rather  desperate  for  the  Republicans.  But 
the  sudden  and  unexpected  resignation  of  Jus 
tice  David  Davis  from  the  Supreme  Court,  the 
member  of  the  Court,  who,  on  account  of  his 
independence  in  politics,  it  was  thought  would 
be  selected  by  his  colleagues  as  the  fifth  judi 
cial  member  of  the  Commission,  in  order  to  ac 
cept  the  United  States  senatorship  from  Illinois, 
to  which  he  had  been  elected  by  the  Democratic 
legislature  of  Illinois,  left  four  members,  all  Re 
publicans,  in  the  Supreme  Court  from  among 
whom  the  justices  designated  in  the  act  must 
choose  the  fifth  judicial  member  of  the  Com 
mission.  The  Commission  as  finally  constituted 
contained  thus  eight  Republicans  and  seven 
Democrats. 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  47 

The  facts  in  the  disputed  cases  were  as  follows: 
The  returns  from  Florida  consisted  of  the  report 
of  the  regular  canvassing  board  created  by  the 
State  legislature  to  the  governor  that  the  Re 
publican  electors  had  been  chosen  by  the  voters, 
the  certificate  of  Governor  Stearns  given  to 
these  electors,  and  the  vote  of  the  electors  for 
Hayes  and  Wheeler;  also  a  paper  containing 
votes  for  Tilden  and  Hendricks  given  by  certain 
persons  representing  themselves  as  the  electors 
chosen  by  the  voters,  but  not  accompanied  by 
the  report  of  any  canvassing  board  or  officer  to 
the  governor  designating  them  as  the  persons 
chosen  electors,  and  not  certified  to  by  the 
governor.  The  returns  from  South  Carolina 
were  in  a  similar  condition. 

Those  from  Louisiana  consisted  of  two  com 
plete  sets,  each  containing  the  report  of  a  can 
vassing  board,  appointed  by  a  body  claiming  to 
be  the  State  legislature,  to  different  persons,  each 
claiming  to  be  the  lawful  governor,  one  report 
declaring  that  the  Republican  electors  had  been 
chosen  by  the  voters,  the  other  that  the  Demo 
cratic  electors  had  been  so  chosen,  also  the  cer 
tificate  of  different  persons,  each  claiming  to  be 


48        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

the  lawful  governor,  to  each  body  of  electors, 
testifying  that  each  were  the  true  electors  of 
the  State,  and  the  vote  of  one  of  these  bodies 
of  electors  for  Hayes  and  Wheeler  and  of  the 
other  for  Tilden  and  Hendricks. 

Finally,  the  returns  from  Oregon  consisted  of 
two  sets;  one  of  which  contained  a  report  from 
the  State  canvassing  officer,  the  Secretary  of 
State,  declaring  the  election  of  the  Republican 
electors  by  the  voters,  also  the  vote  of  this  body 
for  Hayes  and  Wheeler,  and  a  statement  of  the 
selection  of  one  member  of  this  body  by  the 
others,  on  account  of  the  fact  that  one  of  them 
selected  by  the  voters  held  at  the  time  of  his 
election  an  office  under  the  national  govern 
ment,  and  was,  therefore,  ineligible.  The  other 
set  contained  the  governor's  certificate  to  certain 
persons  claiming  to  be  the  lawful  presidential 
electors,  the  vote  of  this  body,  two  for  Hayes 
and  Wheeler  and  one  for  Tilden  and  Hendricks, 
and  an  account  of  the  selection  of  two  members 
of  this  body  by  one  member,  the  one  to  whom 
the  governor  handed  the  certificate  of  election, 
to  fill  the  places  of  the  two  elected  by  the  peo 
ple,  but  who  had  refused  to  serve  with  the  per- 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  49 

son  having  the  governor's  certificate  in  his  pos 
session,  on  the  ground  that  he  had  not  received 
a  majority  of  the  votes  cast  for  the  electors 
and  was  a  Democrat,  in  other  words,  on  the 
ground  that  the  governor,  who  was  himself  a 
Democrat,  had  not  acted  lawfully  in  giving  the 
certificate  to  a  Democrat  who  had  not  received 
a  majority  of  the  votes  of  the  people. 

In  all  of  these  disputed  cases  the  Electoral 
Commission  gave,  by  a  vote  of  eight  to  seven, 
the  electoral  vote  of  these  States  to  Hayes  and 
Wheeler.  It  was  said  then  by  many,  and  has 
been  said  ever  since  by  some,  because  the  eight 
men  voting  to  do  so  were  Republicans.  I  have 
never  seen  why  it  could  not  be  said  with  much 
more  force  that  the  seven  men  voting  against 
so  doing,  and  voting  to  give  the  electoral  votes 
of  the  first  three  and  two  of  the  electoral  votes 
of  the  fourth  to  Tilden  and  Hendricks  did  so 
simply  and  solely  because  they  were  Democrats. 
They  did  not  have  a  leg  nor  a  peg  to  stand  upon 
or  hang  upon  in  either  one  of  the  cases. 

In  Florida  and  South  Carolina  the  self- 
styled  Democratic  electors  had  no  certifica 
tion  to  their  election  by  any  board  or  officer 


50        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

authorized  thereto  by  either  the  legislature  of 
the  State  or  the  Congress  of  the  United  States. 
The  Tilden  counsel  before  the  Commission 
claimed  that  the  Republican  canvassing  boards 
had  thrown  out  returns  from  certain  polling 
places  where  the  majority  was  in  favor  of  the 
Democratic  candidates  for  electors.  But  these 
canvassing  boards  had  the  right  and  power  to 
do  this,  given  to  them  by  the  respective  State 
legislatures,  empowered  thereto  by  the  Consti 
tution  of  the  United  States,  upon  the  existence 
of  certain  conditions  of  fraud,  violence,  or  in 
timidation,  of  the  existence  of  which  the  said 
legislatures  had  made  these  boards  the  final 
judges.  The  Tilden  lawyers  also  claimed  that 
there  had  been  United  States  soldiers  stationed 
at  the  polls,  and  that  this  invalidated  the  elec 
tion.  But  they  were  there  by  authority  of  a 
statute  of  the  Congress  of  the  United  States,  a 
statute  the  enactment  of  which  was  undoubt 
edly  within  the  constitutional  power  of  Congress. 
In  Louisiana  the  claimed  Democratic  electors 
had  certificates  from  a  claimed  canvassing 
board  created  by  a  claimed  legislature  and  also 
from  a  claimed  governor.  But  the  claimed 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  51 

legislature  which  created  this  canvassing  board 
and  this  claimed  governor  had  never  had  any 
legal  existence,  while  the  legislature  creating 
the  canvassing  board  which  had  reported  the 
election  of  the  Republican  electors  to  the  gov 
ernor  and  the  governor  who  had  furnished 
these  electors  with  his  certificate  to  their  elec 
tion  had  been  recognized  as  the  lawful  legisla 
ture  and  the  lawful  governor  of  the  State  by 
every  department  of  the  United  States  Govern 
ment.  It  was  also  claimed  by  the  Tilden  counsel 
before  the  Commission  that  the  Republican  can 
vassing  board  in  Louisiana  had  thrown  out  the 
returns  from  certain  voting  precincts  where  the 
Democrats  were  in  majority,  and  had  thus 
given  the  State  to  the  Republican  electors,  but 
there  was  no  more  evidence  that  they  had  done 
this  than  that  the  terrorizing  organizations  of 
the  Democrats  had  by  intimidation  kept  the 
Republican  voters  away  from  the  polls  in  these 
places.  Anyhow,  the  lawful  legislature  of  the 
State  had,  in  the  exercise  of  a  power  vested  in 
it  by  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States, 
authorized  the  canvassing  board  to  do  this  at 
its  own  discretion,  in  case  of  fraud,  violence. 


52        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

or  intimidation,  of  the  existence  of  which  con 
dition  the  board  was  made  by  the  legislature 
the  final  judge. 

The  Electoral  Commission  could  not,  there 
fore,  have  refused  to  receive  the  returns  of  these 
canvassing  boards,  or  to  count  the  votes  of  the 
electors  designated  therein  for  the  President 
and  Vice-President,  without  violating  the  pro 
vision  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States 
itself,  vesting  in  the  State  legislatures  respec 
tively  the  sole  power  of  determining  the  manner 
of  appointing  the  electors  of  the  President  and 
Vice-President  from  the  respective  States. 

The  case  of  Oregon  was  more  complicated 
but  equally  clear.  The  Secretary  of  State,  the 
ultimate  canvassing  officer  of  the  State,  as  desig 
nated  by  the  State  legislature,  reported  by 
regular  return  to  the  governor  the  election  of 
the  three  Republican  electors.  One  of  these, 
named  Watts,  held  a  small  post-office,  and  was 
thereby  disqualified  as  an  elector.  Thereupon 
the  governor,  a  Democrat,  named  Grover,  gave 
his  certificate  to  the  other  two  Republican 
electors  and  to  the  Democratic  candidate  for 
elector,  who,  after  the  Republican  electors,  had 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  53 

the  highest  number  of  votes  though,  of  course, 
not  a  majority  of  the  votes  cast  for  electors,  in 
place  of  the  disqualified  Watts.  This  man's 
name  was  Cronin,  and  it  was  to  him,  in  fact, 
that  the  governor  handed  his  certificate  for  all 
three.  This  manoeuvre  was,  of  course,  for  the 
purpose  of  placing  Cronin  in  a  position  to  force 
the  two  Republican  electors,  whose  names  were 
on  the  certificate,  to  act  with  him,  and  thus 
give  two  electoral  votes  from  Oregon  to  Hayes 
and  Wheeler  and  one  to  Tilden  and  Hendricks, 
which,  in  the  condition  of  the  vote  in  the  other 
States,  would  have  elected  Tilden  and  Hen 
dricks  President  and  Vice-President.  The  Re 
publican  electors  refused,  however,  to  act  with 
Cronin,  but  met  by  themselves  and  chose  a 
third  man,  Watts,  by  the  bye,  who  had  mean 
time  resigned  his  office,  and  sent  their  three 
votes  for  Hayes  and  Wheeler  to  the  president 
of  the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  attested  by 
a  copy  of  the  report  to  the  governor  by  the 
Secretary  of  State  of  the  State,  the  ultimate  can 
vassing  officer  of  the  State,  of  their  election  as 
electors.  Cronin,  on  the  other  hand,  chose  two 
persons  to  act  with  him,  and  sent  from  his  body 


54        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

two  electoral  votes  for  Hayes  and  Wheeler  and 
one  for  Tilden  and  Hendricks  to  the  president 
of  the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  accompanied 
by  the  certificate  of  the  governor  to  his  own 
election,  but  not  as  to  the  election  of  the  other 
two  acting  with  him. 

The  Electoral  Commission  went,  of  course, 
behind  the  certificate  of  the  governor  who,  as 
we  have  seen,  was  acting  in  giving  his  certificate 
under  an  act  of  Congress,  but  stopped,  of  course, 
at  the  report  of  the  ultimate  canvassing  officer 
of  the  State,  the  Secretary  of  State,  who  derived 
his  authority  from  the  State  legislature,  by 
virtue  of  its  independent  power  over  the  man 
ner  of  appointing  the  electors,  vested  in  it 
by  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States.  The 
right  of  the  two  Republican  electors  to  fill  the 
vacancy  made  by  the  disqualification  of  Watts 
had  been  settled  by  the  vote  of  both  houses 
of  Congress  in  previous  cases  of  this  nature. 

It  was  not,  therefore,  a  partisan  act  on  the 
part  of  the  Electoral  Commission  to  give  the 
entire  electoral  vote  of  the  State  of  Oregon,  and 
of  the  States  of  Florida,  Louisiana,  and  South 
Carolina,  to  the  Republican  candidates  for  the 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  55 

presidency  and  vice-presidency,  but  a  strictly 
legal  and  constitutional  act.  They  could  not 
have  done  otherwise  without  infracting  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States  and  invading 
the  power  of  the  State  legislatures  respectively, 
vested  in  them  and  secured  to  them  by  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States. 

No  President  nor  Vice-President  had  ever  had 
a  more  complete  title  legally  to  his  office  than 
did  Mr.  Hayes  and  Mr.  Wheeler.  In  Oregon 
there  was  no  doubt  that  both  legally  and  morally 
the  Republicans  were  in  the  right  and  the  Demo 
crats  in  the  wrong.  The  Democratic  governor 
had  nothing  to  stand  on  either  in  law,  prece 
dent,  or  morality.  His  act  in  furnishing  Cronin 
with  the  certificate  of  election  was  sheer  partisan 
arbitrariness.  And  if  there  were  any  grounds 
in  Florida,  Louisiana,  and  South  Carolina  of  a 
moral  nature  against  the  Republicans,  they 
were  entirely  overbalanced  by  those  against 
the  Democrats.  If  the  Republican  canvassing 
boards  had  thrown  out  the  returns  of  certain 
precincts,  it  was  because,  they  said,  fraud,  vio 
lence,  or  intimidation  had  rendered  the  counting 
of  such  returns  unlawful,  and  they  were  the 


56        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

final  judges  of  that  question.  It  all  depended 
upon  whether  the  Fourteenth  and  Fifteenth 
Amendments  to  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  were  to  be  upheld  in  these  States  or  not. 
If  they  were,  then  from  every  point  of  view, 
legal  and  moral,  the  Republicans  were  in  the 
right.  They  have  been  in  large  measure  set 
aside  since  then,  but  at  that  time  they  were 
regarded  as  of  full  force,  and  no  officer  either 
of  the  United  States  or  of  the  State  would  have 
fulfilled  his  sworn  duty  had  he  disregarded  their 
provisions.  Moreover,  I  am  entirely  convinced 
that  Mr.  Hayes  would  never  have  entered  upon 
the  office  of  President  had  he  not  known  that 
his  title  was  above  all  just  reproach.  He  had 
the  means  of  judging  of  this  matter  to  the  ex 
tent  not  possessed  by  any  other  man.  His  am 
bition  was  always  subject  to  his  moral  sense. 
The  approval  of  his  own  conscience  stood  with 
him  above  everything  else.  This  was  even  more 
true,  if  possible,  of  Mrs.  Hayes.  There  was  in 
his  household  no  woman's  immoderate  love  of 
place  and  glory  to  lead  him  astray,  but  a  help 
mate,  yea,  a  guide  in  all  right-doing. 

Notwithstanding    all    this,    the    manner    of 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  57 

President  Hayes'  election  was  an  embarrass 
ment  and  a  handicap  to  him  in  many  ways, 
and  has  served  in  the  hands  of  designing  men 
to  depreciate  the  great  work  of  his  administra 
tion.  As  time  goes  on,  however,  and  as  the 
partisan  hatreds  which  clustered  around  the 
election  are  lost  from  view,  that  work  looms 
larger  and  ever  larger. 

Although  there  had  been  threats  of  violence, 
both  secret  and  open,  the  inauguration  went  off 
quietly  and  successfully.  The  inaugural  ad 
dress  was  a  model  of  sound  sense,  wise  states 
manship,  genuine  patriotism,  and  cordial  good 
will,  expressed  in  concise,  chaste,  and  elegant 
language,  and  pronounced  with  a  manly  firm 
ness  and  grace  which  impressed  most  favorably 
and  profoundly  all  those  who  heard  it  and  all 
who  read  it  in  the  public  prints.  The  thing 
most  significant  about  it  was  the  conviction 
which  it  carried  that  the  new  President  was 
firmly  resolved  to  live  up  to  the  pledges  of  the 
party  platform  and  of  his  letter  of  acceptance 
of  the  nomination,  and  not  to  regard  them  as 
mere  campaign  documents  to  be  ignored  and 
forgotten  after  the  election.  While  this  was 


58        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

most  gratifying  and  encouraging  to  the  people, 
it  was  startling  and  disquieting  to  the  so-called 
elder  statesmen,  Elaine,  Conkling,  Cameron, 
Logan,  and  the  rest,  chiefly  because  of  the  civil- 
service  reform  pledges  of  the  platform,  which 
President  Hayes  repeated  with  great  emphasis 
in  the  inaugural  and  declared  himself  unaltera 
bly  determined,  in  so  far  as  it  lay  within  his 
power,  to  fulfil.  This  would  destroy  the  pat 
ronage  system  in  the  appointment  to  office 
upon  which  their  power  rested,  and  upon  which 
the  existing  organization  of  the  party  depended 
in  very  large  measure.  I  dare  say  that  they 
thought  they  were  sincere  in  opposing  the  Presi 
dent  in  this  matter,  but  the  country  gave  them 
quickly  and  sharply  to  understand  that  they 
were  out  of  touch  with  the  views  of  the  plain 
people  in  regard  to  it. 

Before  going  to  Washington  for  his  inaugura 
tion  Mr.  Hayes  had  fixed  upon  the  three  chief 
members  of  his  Cabinet.  While  he  had  done 
this  quite  independently,  he  had  not  done  it 
arbitrarily.  He  had  conferred  with  a  few 
trusted  friends,  but  he  had  really  consulted  the 
country  and  had  selected  the  men  whom  na- 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  59 

tional,  and  in  one  case  at  least  international, 
reputation  had  pointed  out  as  the  best-fitted 
men  in  the  land  for  the  positions. 

First  of  all,  there  was  the  profound  and  at 
the  same  time  brilliant  lawyer,  Mr.  William  M. 
Evarts,  equally  learned  in  public  as  in  private 
law,  whose  great  qualities  had  been  manifested 
in  his  great  achievements  in  the  impeachment 
trial  of  President  Johnson,  in  the  presentation 
of  the  American  case  before  the  Geneva  Tribu 
nal,  and  in  the  argument  of  the  Republican  case 
before  the  Electoral  Commission.  Under  all  of 
these  supreme  tests  he  had  shown  himself  the 
most  sound  and  learned  constitutional  and  inter 
national  lawyer  and  the  most  skilful  diplomatist 
which  the  country  possessed.  He  was  a  genu 
ine  Republican,  but  not  a  wire-pulling  politi 
cian,  and  not  so  hide-bound  in  his  party  allegi 
ance  as  to  suit  the  ring-leaders  of  the  party. 
He  knew  more  of  law,  history,  and  philosophy 
than  all  of  them  put  together,  and  such  a 
man  is  not  naturally  a  follower,  but  a  leader. 
The  principle  of  natural  selection  designated 
him  for  the  secretaryship  of  state,  and  Mr. 
Hayes  had  fixed  upon  him  for  the  position 


60        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

before  he  made  the  famous  plea  in  the  election 
case. 

He  was  not,  however,  the  first  to  be  ap 
proached  by  Mr.  Hayes  in  constituting  the 
membership  of  his  Cabinet.  The  first  to  whom 
the  formal  proposal  was  made  to  share  in  the 
responsibilities  of  the  administration  was  the 
President-elect's  long-time  friend  and  fellow 
Ohioan,  Senator  John  Sherman.  Mr.  Hayes 
asked  Senator  Sherman  to  take  the  exceedingly 
responsible  position  of  the  secretaryship  of  the 
treasury.  In  doing  this  Mr.  Hayes  had  simply 
taken  the  man  whom  the  whole  country  re 
garded  as  the  soundest  man  in  the  nation,  next 
to  Mr.  Hayes  himself,  on  the  monetary  question, 
and  the  best-equipped  man  to  discharge  the 
great  responsibilities  of  conducting  the  finances 
of  the  country  through  the  period  of  preparation 
for  the  resumption  of  specie  payments  to  the 
accomplishment  of  that  result.  He  had  long 
been  looked  up  to  in  the  Congress  of  the  United 
States  as  the  highest  authority  among  them  on 
the  subject  of  public  finance,  and  the  Resump 
tion  Act  of  1875  was,  in  large  measure,  his  work, 
in  much  larger  measure  than  that  of  any  other 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  61 

man.  Mr.  Hayes  not  only  asked  Senator  Sher 
man  first  and  directly  to  become  a  member, 
under  the  circumstances  of  the  times  perhaps 
the  most  important  member,  of  his  official  house 
hold,  but  he  availed  himself  of  Senator  Sher 
man's  influence  in  Washington  and  in  the  East 
to  secure  Mr.  Evarts. 

The  third  member  of  his  Cabinet  selected  by 
Mr.  Hayes  was  chosen  by  him  more  largely 
upon  grounds  of  personal  preference  than  either 
Mr.  Sherman  or  Mr.  Evarts  —  in  fact,  than  any 
other  member  of  the  body.  I  mean  exactly  by 
this  statement  that  the  general  consensus  had 
less  part  in  the  selection  of  this  member,  and  the 
feelings  of  the  President-elect  himself  greater 
part,  than  in  the  choice  of  any  other.  It  was 
the  German-American,  Carl  Schurz,  profound 
scholar,  brilliant  orator,  brave  soldier,  wise 
statesman,  independent  thinker,  great  reader, 
honest  man,  genial  companion,  and  courteous 
gentleman.  These  were  qualities  which  recom 
mended  him  irresistibly  to  a  man  like  Mr.  Hayes. 
In  fact,  the  two  men  were  as  sympathetic,  as 
similar  in  their  natures,  as  it  is  possible  for  two 
men  of  different  nationality  to  be.  Politically 


62        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

it  was,  in  large  measure,  Mr.  Schurz's  zeal  for 
civil-service  reform  and  his  immense  fund  of  in 
formation  regarding  administrative  systems  and 
^practices  in  foreign  countries  which  determined 
Mr.  Hayes  to  make  him  his  Secretary  of  the 
Interior  and  give  him  the  power  to  set  up  the 
models  of  improved  administrative  service  in 
this  department,  from  which  all  the  others 
might  take  lesson.  Mr.  Hayes  had  settled  upon 
these  three  men  as  the  leading  members  of  his 
Cabinet  of  advisers  before  he  went  to  Wash 
ington  to  take  up  the  reins  of  government  —  in 
fact,  before  he  had  been  declared  elected  —  and 
nothing  and  nobody  could  shake  him  from  his 
determination.  And  there  was  not  the  slight 
est  reason  why  he  should  have  been.  He  had 
selected  the  best  talent,  character,  and  com 
petency  which  the  Republican  party  and  the 
country  at  large  possessed  to  aid  him  in  the 
solution  of  the  three  great  problems  —  the  paci 
fication  of  the  South,  the  regulation  of  the  mon 
etary  and  financial  system,  and  the  reform  of  the 
civil  service  —  the  three  great  problems  which 
confronted  his  administration  at  the  outset  and 
claimed  by  far  the  largest  share  of  attention  and 
activity  throughout. 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  63 

Mr.  Hayes  had  also  before  going  to  Wash 
ington  considered  most  seriously  nominating 
General  Johnston,  the  famous  Confederate 
leader,  to  be  his  Secretary  of  War.  There 
was  no  doubt  of  General  Johnston's  techni 
cal  qualifications  to  fill  the  position,  and  Mr. 
Hayes  desired  to  give  this  proof  to  the  South  of 
his  sincere  intentions  towards  that  section  of  the 
country.  He  thought  that  it  would  be  the  seal 
of  the  re-establishment  of  the  union  of  feeling 
between  North  and  South  in  a  common  nation 
ality.  He  felt  it  necessary,  however,  to  consult 
some  of  the  Republican  leaders  in  the  matter, 
and  was  immediately  made  to  understand  that 
his  generous  impulses  were  not  shared  by  them. 
With  great  reluctance  he  gave  up  Johnston,  for 
he  entertained  very  high  respect  for  his  ability 
and  character.  He  still  clung,  however,  to  his 
plan  of  having  a  Southerner  as  a  member  of  his 
official  family.  After  reaching  Washington  he 
settled  upon  Senator  David  M.  Key,  of  Ten 
nessee.  He  was  a  Democrat  and  had  served  as 
a  Confederate  soldier,  but  he  hailed  from  a 
State  that  had  furnished  almost  as  many  sol 
diers  to  the  Union  army  as  to  the  Confederate 
army,  and  he  was  a  genuinely  reconstructed 


64        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

rebel.  He  had  shown  this  in  his  attitude  upon 
all  questions  coming  before  Congress,  and  he 
had  exercised  a  most  favorable  influence  over 
the  Southern  members  in  Congress  during  the 
trying  session  of  1876-7.  The  selection  was 
a  wise  one,  and  Mr.  Key  proved  himself  a  valu 
able  counsellor  of  the  President  in  the  Southern 
question  as  well  as  an  able  administrator  of  the 
Post-OfHce  Department. 

In  the  selection  of  the  other  three  members 
of  the  Cabinet  President  Hayes  seems  to  have 
been  influenced  in  a  greater  degree  by  the  lead 
ers  of  the  party  in  Congress,  though  not  by  the 
domineering  element  among  them.  He  refused 
to  give  ear  to  Blaine,  who  was  anxious  to  place 
one  of  his  lieutenants,  W.  P.  Frye,  in  the  Cab 
inet,  but  he  took  counsel  of  Senator  Hoar  and 
selected,  with  Hoar's  advice,  Judge  Charles 
Devens  as  his  Attorney-General.  The  choice 
was  an  excellent  one.  It  could  hardly  have 
been  improved.  Desire  to  show  his  respect  for 
Governor  Morton,  the  great  war  governor  of 
Indiana,  seems  also  to  have  been  an  element  in 
the  selection  of  Colonel  Richard  W.  Thompson, 
the  brilliant  Indiana  orator,  who  had  made 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  65 

the  nominating  speech  for  Morton  at  the  Cin 
cinnati  convention,  as  the  Secretary  of  the 
Navy. 

Who  or  what  recommended  the  selection  of 
Mr.  McCrary  to  Mr.  Hayes  as  Secretary  of  War 
is  not  so  certain.  Mr.  McCrary  was  an  excellent 
lawyer,  but  had  made  no  mark  as  a  soldier.  I 
find  by  looking  over  the  Congressional  debates 
that  he  was  the  member  of  Congress  who  seems 
to  have  first  suggested  the  idea  of  the  Electoral 
Commission  as  the  means  for  solving  the  prob 
lem  of  the  contested  election.  He  was  an  au 
thority  on  the  law  of  elections.  President  Hayes 
probably  had  him  in  mind  first  for  the  attorney- 
generalship,  and  after  Devens'  name  came  up 
for  a  place  in  the  Cabinet  changed  him  over  to 
the  secretaryship  of  war. 

Taken  all  together,  it  was  the  strongest  body 
of  men,  each  best  fitted  for  the  place  assigned 
to  him,  that  ever  sat  around  the  council-table 
of  a  President  of  the  United  States.  Thomp 
son  was  the  weakest  one  among  them.  He 
came  the  nearest  also  to  being  a  political  ap 
pointment.  But  his  want  of  equal  efficiency 
with  the  others  was  more  because  of  his  ad- 


66        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

vanced  age  than  any  lack  of  original  endowment 
or  practical  experience. 

There  was  no  valid  reason  why  the  Senate 
should  have  manifested  any  hesitation  what 
ever  in  the  confirmation  of  any  one  of  them, 
except,  perhaps,  the  Democrat,  Key.  It  might 
have  been  a  question  whether  a  Democrat  could 
conscientiously  uphold  the  general  policy  of  a 
Republican  administration.  Senator  Key  had 
already  informed  the  President,  however,  that 
if  he  should  feel  at  any  time  that  he  could  not 
do  so,  he  would  promptly  resign  his  portfolio. 
Nevertheless,  the  Senate,  under  the  leadership 
of  the  stalwart  Republicans,  departed  from  its 
unbroken  custom  of  confirming  the  President's 
nominees  of  the  members  of  his  official  family 
immediately  and  without  reference  to  any  com 
mittees  and  voted  to  refer  them  all  to  com 
mittees  for  examination  and  report.  Even 
Senator  Sherman's  nomination  went  with  the 
rest,  although  it  had  always  been  the  usage  of 
the  Senate  to  confirm  the  nomination  of  one  of 
its  own  members  to  any  office  immediately  and 
without  reference.  It  was  all  meant  as  an  at 
tack  upon  the  President  for  exercising  his  own 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  67 

independent  discretion  in  nominating  the  mem 
bers  of  his  Cabinet,  instead  of  asking  Elaine, 
Conkling,  Cameron,  and  some  others  each  to 
nominate  a  member  for  him. 

The  action  of  the  Senate,  however,  immedi 
ately  produced  a  revolt  in  the  country.  The 
press  generally  disapproved  in  emphatic  lan 
guage  of  the  departure  of  the  Senate  from  its  . 
immemorial  custom  in  this  instance.  Especially 
the  Republican  press  manifested,  in  many  cases, 
intense  indignation  at  this  attempt  to  discredit 
and  weaken  the  Republican  administration, 
especially  at  a  time  when  Republican  unity  and 
harmony  were  most  needed.  Individual  sena 
tors  were  stormed  with  telegrams  and  letters 
from  their  particular  constituents  demanding 
that  the  Senate  recede  from  its  indefensible 
position.  It  was  on  Wednesday,  March  7th, 
that  the  President  sent  the  nominations  to  the 
Senate.  By  Saturday  the  battle  between  the 
Senate  and  the  country  was  over.  On  Thursday 
the  Senate  had  taken  the  nomination  of  Senator 
Sherman  from  the  committee  to  which  it  had 
been  referred  on  the  day  before  and  confirmed  it. 
On  Saturday,  the  9th,  the  committees  reported 


68        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

all  the  nominations  favorably,  and  the  Senate 
confirmed  them  all  immediately  and  by  almost 
unanimous  vote. 

It  was  evident  thus  from  the  outset  that  Mr. 
Hayes'  administration  would  be  involved  in 
more  or  less  of  conflict  with  the  elder  statesmen 
of  the  Republican  party,  but  that  it  would  be 
sustained  by  the  people,  and  that,  too,  in  con 
siderable  degree,  without  regard  to  party.  It 
is  true  that  Mr.  Hayes  himself  was  a  loyal  Re 
publican,  a  much  sounder  Republican  than 
either  Blaine,  Conkling,  or  Cameron,  the  men 
whom  General  Noyes  called  "invincible  in  peace 
and  invisible  in  war."  Mr.  Hayes  had  proved 
his  Republicanism  on  the  battle-field  as  well  as 
in  civil  office  and  in  the  ranks  of  the  plain  citi 
zens.  But  he  understood  better  than  any  of 
them  the  distinctions  between  civil  rights  and 
political  qualifications,  and  he  furthermore  un 
derstood  the  difference  between  the  political  side 
and  the  business  side  of  the  administration.  In 
other  words,  Mr.  Hayes  was  a  political  scientist 
and  a  statesman  as  well  as  a  party  man.  He 
knew  the  place  of  party  in  the  system  of  the 
Republic.  He  knew,  therefore,  where  loyalty 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  69 

to  party  must  give  way  to  loyalty  to  country. 
He  knew  that  the  exaggeration  of  party  loyalty 
made  the  attainment  of  national  unity  and  the 
development  of  a  national  consensus  of  opinion 
in  regard  to  the  fundamental  principles  of  rights 
and  policies  impossible.  With  him,  therefore, 
party  loyalty  must  be  kept  within  the  limita 
tions  imposed  upon  it  by  sound  political  sci 
ence,  constitutional  law,  and  the  historic  ideals  of 
American  policy.  He  himself  expressed  the  re 
lation  which  should  exist  between  party  and 
people,  the  relation  which  he  undertook  to  es 
tablish  as  the  aim  and  end  of  his  administration, 
in  the  famous  sentence  which  has  now  become 
one  of  the  most  important  of  American  political 
axioms,  viz.:  "He  serves  his  party  best  who 
serves  his  country  best." 


LECTURE  III 

THE  SOUTHERN  POLICY  AND  THE 
FINANCIAL  POLICY 

Awe  have  seen,  the  Republican  platform 
promised  the  pacification  of  the  South, 
Mr.  Hayes'  letter  of  acceptance  of  the 
nomination  for  the  presidency  reiterated  it  with 
more  emphasis,  and  the  President's  inaugural 
address  contained  the  assertion  of  his  deter 
mination  to  realize  it.  If  any  of  the  statesmen 
or  politicians  who  framed  the  platform  sup 
posed  that  they  were  simply  composing  high- 
sounding  phrases  for  the  purposes  of  the  cam 
paign,  and  that  these  would  be  allowed  to  go 
the  usual  way  of  such  pronunciamentos  by  the 
administration,  they  had  greatly  misread  the 
character  of  the  man  whom  they  had  helped 
to  make  the  chief  magistrate  of  the  nation.  It 
was  observed  that  during  the  campaign  the 
Republican  managers,  writers,  and  speakers  had 
emphasized  the  financial  question  and  had  al 
lowed  the  Southern  question  to  fall  into  the 

70 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  71 

background.  "  And  it  must  have  been  something 
of  a  shock  to  the  "Stalwarts,"  the  elder  states 
men,  that  the  President  put  the  Southern  ques 
tion  first  in  his  inaugural  and  dwelt  upon  it  at 
greatest  length,  and  then  followed  it  with  his 
earnest  appeal  for  civil-service  reform,  thus  in 
dicating  to  the  country  that  his  administration 
was  to  be  devoted  most  especially  to  the  solu 
tion  of  these  two  great  problems,  and  to  that  of 
the  Southern  situation  first  of  all. 

At  the  time  of  the  election  of  1876,  all  the 
Southern  States,  except  Florida,  Louisiana,  and 
South  Carolina,  had,  partly  through  means  of 
doubtful  legality,  indeed,  freed  themselves  from 
carpetbag-negro  domination.  Of  these  three 
the  situation  of  Florida  was  most  favorable. 
The  final  determination  of  the  State  elections  in 
this  State  was  a  function  of  its  supreme  court, 
and  happily  there  was  one  universally  recog 
nized  court  in  Florida  —  and  but  one.  This 
court  sat  in  judgment  on  the  State  elections 
of  1876  and  decided  that  the  Democratic  can 
didates  for  governor  and  lieutenant-governor 
had  been  elected.  The  Republican  candidates 
simply  protested,  but  did  not  resist  forcibly  nor 


72        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

demand  the  support  of  the  Washington  govern 
ment.  The  question  as  to  Florida  was  thus 
solved  by  the  State  law  and  State  administra 
tion,  and  Florida  was  reclaimed  by  its  own 
white  citizens. 

The  situation  in  Louisiana  and  South  Car 
olina  was,  however,  quite  different.  The  leg 
islatures  of  these  States  as  well  as  that  of 
Florida  had,  as  we  have  seen  in  the  previous 
lecture,  constructed  returning-boards  as  the 
final  authority  in  the  counting  of  the  votes  of 
the  suffrage  holders,  with  the  power  to  throw 
out  the  returns  of  the  election  officers  from  pre 
cincts  and  districts  in  which  fraud  or  force  had 
been  practised.  This  was  entirely  regular,  as 
we  have  also  seen,  in  regard  to  the  election  of 
the  electors  of  the  President  and  the  Vice- 
President,  because  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States  vests  this  power  in  the  several 
State  legislatures,  and  there  is  no  other  body 
or  organ  in  the  State  which  can  lawfully  inter 
fere  with  the  legislature  in  the  exercise  of  this 
function,  not  even  the  people  of  the  State  them 
selves. 

Whether  these  returning-boards  were,  how- 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  73 

ever,  the  final  authority  for  counting  the  votes 
of  the  suffrage  holders  for  State  officers  and  the 
members  of  the  State  legislatures  was  quite 
another  question,  and  depended  for  its  solution 
upon  the  provisions  of  the  constitutions  of  the 
respective  States. 

In  the  States  of  Louisiana  and  South  Carolina 
these  returning-boards  had  assumed  to  act  in 
both  capacities,  and  had  returned  the  Repub 
lican  candidates  for  governor  —  Packard  in  Lou 
isiana  and  Chamberlain  in  South  Carolina  —  as 
elected,  and  also  the  Republican  candidates  for 
the  legislature  in  sufficient  number  to  create 
Republican  legislatures  in  both  States.  The 
Democrats,  on  the  other  hand,  claimed  that  the 
returning-boards  created  by  the  legislatures  had, 
according  to  the  State  constitutions,  no  authority 
over  the  returns  of  the  election  officers  of  the 
precincts  and  districts,  and  claimed  on  the  face 
of  the  returns  the  election  of  Francis  T.  Nicholls 
as  governor  of  Louisiana,  and  Wade  Hampton 
as  governor  of  South  Carolina,  and  of  a  suffi 
cient  number  of  candidates  for  the  legislature 
to  constitute  the  lawful  legislature  in  each  of 
these  States. 


74        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

Both  Packard  and  Nicholls  had  set  up  State 
governments  in  Louisiana,  and  both  Chamber 
lain  and  Hampton  had  set  up  State  governments 
in  South  Carolina,  and  each  was  supported  by  a 
legislature  claiming  to  be  the  lawful  legislature  of 
the  State.  In  Louisiana  there  were  also  two  su 
preme  courts,  one  attached  to  each  government. 
The  Republican  governors  and  legislatures  were 
installed  in  the  regular  State  House  in  each 
State,  and  were  defended  by  detachments  of 
United  States  troops  within  the  buildings,  or 
encamped  around  them.  The  Democratic  gov 
ernments  had,  on  the  other  hand,  occupied 
fixed  quarters,  and  were  in  potential  if  not 
actual  command  of  the  State  militia  and  were 
sustained  by  voluntary  contributions  from  the 
taxpayers.  The  jurisdiction  of  the  Republican 
governments,  finally,  was  recognized  over  only 
a  very  limited  area  in  the  two  States,  while  that 
of  the  Democratic  governments  was  pretty  gen 
erally  recognized  throughout  the  same. 

It  was  clear  that  matters  had'reached  a  crisis 
in  the  Southern  problem,  and  that  the  danger 
of  insurrection  was  extremely  imminent.  One 
of  the  great  questions  which  the  President  had  to 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  75 

determine  in  his  own  mind  was  whether  he  could 
trust  the  white  leaders  in  these  States  to  secure 
the  constitutional  rights  of  the  blacks.  Nearly 
twelve  years  had  passed  since  the  close  of  the 
Civil  War,  and  it  was  pretty  clear  to  any  far- 
seeing,  unprejudiced  mind  that  the  regime  of 
the  carpetbaggers  and  negroes,  supported  by 
the  United  States  soldiery,  was  a  dismal  failure 
and  a  lasting  disgrace,  and  that  matters  could 
not  be  made  much  worse  by  any  change  which 
could  be  fairly  conceived.  The  Republican 
Stalwarts  tried  to  hold  the  President  by  the 
argument  that  the  titles  of  Packard  and  Cham 
berlain,  and  that  of  the  legislatures  acting  with 
them,  rested  on  the  same  basis  as  his  own,  viz. : 
the  decisions  of  the  returning-boards;  but  he 
was  constitutional  lawyer  enough  to  know  that, 
while  these  decisions  were  lawful  and  binding 
in  his  case,  by  virtue  of  a  provision  of  the  Con 
stitution  of  the  United  States,  they  were  subject 
to  revision  by  higher  authority  in  State  elections, 
if  so  ordered  by  the  constitution  of  the  State 
concerned.  He  saw  clearly  that  he  was  not 
compelled  by  law,  or  even  by  reason  of  con 
sistency,  to  give  the  military  power  of  the 


76        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

United  States  to  the  maintenance  of  the  Repub 
lican  State  governments  in  Louisiana  and  South 
Carolina  against  the  Democratic  State  govern 
ments,  unless  the  contest  between  the  two  gov 
ernments  in  each  State  should  lead  to  domestic 
violence,  and  the  legislature  or  legislatures 
thereof,  or  the  executive  or  executives  thereof, 
should  apply  to  him  for  protection,  in  which 
event  he  would  have  to  determine  which  was 
the  real  government  of  the  State,  and  extend 
military  support,  if  necessary,  to  this  one. 

President  Hayes  was  thoroughly  convinced 
that  the  time  had  come  to  test  the  assurances 
of  the  responsible  white  men  of  these  States, 
whether  they  had  been  engaged  twelve  years 
before  in  rebellion  against  the  national  govern 
ment  and  sovereignty  or  not,  that  the  rights, 
both  civil  and  political,  of  all  classes  of  the 
population  would  be  equally  upheld  and  pro 
tected,  if  the  United  States  would  withdraw  its 
military  power  and  leave  to  the  States  their 
constitutional  autonomy;  but  he  was  wisely 
mindful  to  do  this  in  a  manner  and  with  such 
preparatory  steps  as  to  make  sure  that  when  he 
withdrew  the  troops  the  contention  between  the 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  77 

rival  governments  would  settle  itself  by  the  im 
mediate  subsidence  of  the  claims  of  one  of  them 
in  each  case,  and  not  lead  again  to  insurrec 
tionary  movements,  such  as  might  require  the 
reintervention  of  the  military  power  of  the 
United  States. 

With  this  in  view  President  Hayes  took  up 
the  question  as  related  to  South  Carolina  first, 
and  for  two  reasons:  primarily,  because  there 
was  only  one  supreme  court  and  only  one  set 
of  judicial  organs  in  South  Carolina,  and  there 
fore  there  could  be  no  conflicting  decisions  of 
the  State  courts  in  regard  to  the  State  elections 
or  anything  else,  which  could  not  be  overcome 
simply  by  appeal  to  the  one  universally  recog 
nized  supreme  court  from  the  lower  courts; 
and,  secondly,  because  the  high  and  patriotic 
character  of  the  Republican  claimant  to  the 
governorship  in  South  Carolina  encouraged 
President  Hayes  to  believe  that  a  personal  ap 
peal  on  the  part  of  the  President  to  Mr.  Cham 
berlain  would  meet  with  a  generous  response, 
and  probably  with  disinterested  co-operation. 
On  the  23d  of  March,  not  quite  three  weeks  from 
the  day  of  his  inauguration  as  President,  Mr. 


78        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

Hayes  caused  to  be  addressed  to  Mr.  Chamber 
lain  and  Mr.  Hampton  invitations  to  come  to 
Washington  for  a  conference  with  him  regard 
ing  the  political  condition  of  the  State  of  South 
Carolina.  The  notes  of  invitation  contained 
the  following  significant  paragraph:  "It  is  the 
earnest  desire  of  the  President  to  be  able  to 
put  an  end  as  speedily  as  possible  to  all  appear 
ance  of  intervention  of  the  military  authority 
of  the  United  States  in  the  political  derange 
ments  which  affect  the  government  and  afflict 
the  people  of  South  Carolina.  In  this  desire 
the  President  cannot  doubt  he  truly  represents 
the  patriotic  feeling  of  the  great  body  of  the 
people  of  the  United  States." 

With  this  the  two  gentlemen  claiming  the 
governorship  of  South  Carolina  were  not  left  in 
doubt  in  regard  to  what  they  would  have  to  face 
in  Washington.  The  Republican  Chamberlain 
went  to  meet  the  Republican  President  unher 
alded  and  depressed,  while  the  Democrat  Hamp 
ton's  journey  was  like  a  triumphal  procession. 
On  March  29th  they  were  both  in  the  national 
capital.  The  President  went  patiently  and 
thoroughly  over  the  whole  question  with  each 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  79 

of  them,  during  the  course  of  which  conversa 
tions  he  became  even  more  thoroughly  con 
vinced  that  the  time  had  come  for  leaving  the 
States  of  the  South  to  themselves  in  their  own 
local  affairs.  Able  and  persuasive  as  Mr.  Cham 
berlain  was,  his  arguments  only  revealed  the 
more  clearly  that  his  claim  to  rule  could  be 
sustained  only  on  the  principle  that  the  State 
of  South  Carolina  was  not  a  State  of  the  Union 
but  a  military  province.  The  time  had  passed 
for  that. 

On  April  3,  1877,  after  due  consultation  with 
his  advisers,  the  President  took  the  momentous 
step.  By  a  formal  note  addressed  to  the  Secre 
tary  of  War,  he  gave  the  renowned  order  which 
settled  the  Southern  question  and  ended  the 
conflict  between  the  North  and  the  South.  It 
read  as  follows:  "Prior  to  my  entering  upon 
the  duties  of  the  presidency,  there  had  been  sta 
tioned  by  order  of  my  predecessor  in  the  State 
House  at  Columbia,  South  Carolina,  a  detach 
ment  of  United  States  Infantry.  Finding  them 
in  that  place,  I  have  thought  proper  to  delay  a 
decision  of  the  question  of  their  removal  until 
I  could  consider  and  determine  whether  the 


80        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

condition  of  affairs  in  that  State  is  now  such  as 
either  to  require  or  justify  the  continued  mili 
tary  occupation  of  the  State  House.  In  my 
opinion  there  does  not  now  exist  in  that  State 
such  domestic  violence  as  is  contemplated  by 
the  Constitution  as  the  ground  upon  which  the 
military  power  of  the  national  government  may 
be  invoked  for  the  defense  of  the  State.  There 
are,  it  is  true,  grave  and  serious  disputes  as  to 
the  rights  of  certain  claimants  to  the  chief  execu 
tive  office  of  that  State.  But  these  are  to  be 
settled  and  determined,  not  by  the  executive  of 
the  United  States,  but  by  such  orderly  and 
peaceable  methods  as  may  be  provided  by  the 
constitution  and  laws  of  the  State.  I  feel  as 
sured  that  no  resort  to  violence  is  contemplated 
in  any  quarter,  but  that,  on  the  contrary,  the 
disputes  in  question  are  to  be  settled  solely  by 
such  peaceful  remedies  as  the  constitution  and 
laws  of  the  State  provide.  Under  these  cir 
cumstances,  in  this  confidence,  I  now  deem  it 
proper  to  take  action  in  accordance  with  the 
principles  announced  when  I  entered  upon  the 
duties  of  the  presidency.  You  are,  therefore, 
directed  to  see  that  the  proper  orders  are  issued 
for  the  removal  of  said  troops  from  the  State 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  81 

House   to    their    previous    place    of    encamp 
ment." 

At  midday  on  April  10th,  the  United  States 
soldiers  marched  out  of  the  State  House  to  their 
barracks.  Mr.  Chamberlain  made  no  resistance 
to  the  occupation  of  the  State  House  by  Mr. 
Hampton,  except  the  publication  of  an  address 
asserting  the  justice  of  his  cause,  and  complain 
ing  of  the  desertion  of  it  by  the  national  govern 
ment.  The  two  legislatures  became  one  by  the 
action  of  the  proper  State  authorities  in  deter 
mining  the  questions  of  State  elections.  All  the 
State,  county,  and  city  officers  recognized  the 
rightful  authority  of  the  Hampton  government. 
The  courts,  as  we  have  seen,  were  already  in 
harmony  with  it.  It  required  but  a  few  days 
to  restore  peace  and  order  and  good  government, 
government  by  its  own  people,  by  its  own  best 
people,  to  the  long-suffering  State.  And  but  a 
few  months  had  passed  when  the  President's 
course,  so  stoutly  opposed  by  the  Republican 
Stalwarts  and  the  radical  Negrophiles  at  the 
outset,  was  approved  so  universally  as  having 
stood  the  practical  test,  that  nobody  of  any 
importance  could  be  found  lifting  a  voice  in 
further  criticism  of  it. 


82        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

The  situation  in  Louisiana  was  somewhat 
more  difficult  to  deal  with.  There  were  two 
governors,  two  legislatures,  and  two  supreme 
courts,  and  each  governor  had  a  military  force; 
the  Republican  claimant,  Packard,  had  the 
metropolitan  police  of  New  Orleans  and  the 
United  States  soldiers,  and  the  Democrat  claim 
ant,  Nicholls,  had  the  State  militia.  Moreover, 
Packard  was  a  genuine  carpetbagger,  with  none 
of  the  moral  fibre  and  real  patriotic  spirit  of 
Chamberlain. 

After  much  reflection  President  Hayes  deter 
mined  to  send  a  commission  to  Louisiana  to 
examine  into  the  situation,  and  report  to  him 
a  plan  or  suggestion  for  settling  the  problem  of 
the  double  government  in  the  State  of  Louisiana 
in  accordance  with  the  constitution  of  the  State, 
and  "  without  involving  the  element  of  military 
power"  in  the  settlement,  and  he  instructed  the 
commission  to  try  to  secure  the  universal  recog 
nition  of  one  government,  as  a  whole,  if  possible, 
and,  if  not,  to  try  to  get  into  a  single  body  a 
majority  of  the  persons  holding  certificates  of 
election  to  membership  in  the  legislature  under 
each  set  of  electoral  returns,  so  as  to  constitute 
a  single  legislature  from  which,  as  a  base,  to 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  83 

work  out  the  unification  of  the  other  branches 
of  the  State  government.  The  President  gave 
the  commission  most  particularly  to  understand 
that  they  were  not  to  investigate  the  State  elec 
tions  or  the  State  procedures  for  counting  the 
votes  for  State  officers  and  the  members  of  the 
State  legislature.  That  had  been  already  done 
by  Congressional  committees. 

According  to  the  report  of  the  commission,  the 
following  situation  was  found  to  exist  on  the 
date  of  the  arrival  of  its  members,  April  6th: 
"Governor  Packard  was  at  the  State  House 
with  his  legislature  and  friends  and  armed  police 
force.  As  there  was  no  quorum  in  the  Senate, 
even  upon  his  own  theory  of  law,  his  legislature 
was  necessarily  inactive.  The  supreme  court, 
which  recognized  his  authority,  had  not  at 
tempted  to  transact  any  business  since  it  had 
been  dispossessed  of  its  court-room  and  the 
custody  of  its  records,  on  the  9th  of  January, 
1877.  He  had  no  organized  militia,  alleging 
that  his  deficiency  in  that  respect  was  owing  to 
his  obedience  to  the  orders  of  President  Grant, 
to  take  no  steps  to  change  the  relative  posi 
tion  of  himself  and  Governor  Nicholls.  His 
main  reliance  was  upon  his  alleged  legal  title, 


84        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

claiming  that  it  was  the  constitutional  duty  of 
the  President  to  recognize  it  and  to  afford 
him  such  military  assistance  as  might  be  nec 
essary  to  enable  him  to  assert  his  authority  as 
governor. 

"Governor  Nicholls  was  occupying  the  Odd- 
Fellows'  Hall  as  a  State  House.  His  legislature 
met  there,  and  was  actively  engaged  in  the  busi 
ness  of  legislation.  All  the  departments  of  the 
city  government  of  New  Orleans  recognized  his 
authority.  The  supreme  court,  nominated  by 
him  and  confirmed  by  his  Senate,  was  holding 
daily  sessions  and  had  heard  about  two  hundred 
cases.  The  time  for  the  collection  of  taxes  had 
not  arrived,  but  considerable  sums  of  money, 
in  the  form  of  taxes,  had  been  voluntarily  paid 
into  his  treasury,  out  of  which  he  was  defraying 
the  ordinary  expenses  of  the  State  government. 
The  Nicholls  legislature  had  a  quorum  in  the 
Senate  upon  either  the  Nicholls  or  Packard 
theory  of  law,  and  a  quorum  in  the  House  upon 
the  Nicholls,  but  not  on  the  Packard,  theory. 
The  Packard  legislature  had  a  quorum  in  the 
House  on  its  own  theory  of  law,  but,  as  already 
stated,  not  in  the  Senate,  and  was  thus  disabled 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  85 

from  legislation  that  would  be  valid,  even  in 
the  judgment  of  its  own  party. 

"The  commission  found  it  to  be  very  difficult 
to  ascertain  the  precise  extent  to  which  the  re 
spective  governments  were  acknowledged  in  the 
various  parishes  outside  of  New  Orleans:  but 
it  is  safe  to  say  that  the  changes  which  had 
taken  place  in  parishes  after  the  organization 
of  the  two  governments,  January  9,  1877,  were 
in  favor  of  the  Nicholls  government." 

Under  these  conditions  the  commission  soon 
found  it  impossible  to  bring  the  two  claimants 
for  the  governorship  to  any  arrangement,  and 
turned  to  the  task  of  bringing  together  in  a  single 
legislative  body  a  sufficient  number  of  members 
holding  their  certificate  of  election  under  either 
theory  of  the  election  law  to  form  a  quorum. 
In  a  number  of  cases  the  election  officers  had 
returned  the  same  persons  as  members  of  the 
Nicholls  legislature  as  were  certified  by  the 
Republican  returning-board  as  members  of  the 
Packard  legislature.  These  persons  had  first 
qualified  in  the  Packard  legislature.  But  if  they 
could  be  induced  to  go  over  into  the  Nicholls 
legislature,  they  would  bring  up  the  member- 


86        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

ship  of  the  Nicholls  legislature  to  a  legal  quo 
rum  in  both  houses,  and  leave  the  two  houses 
of  the  Packard  legislature  without  a  quorum, 
on  either  theory  of  the  election  law,  in  either. 

On  the  20th  of  April  the  commission  sent  a 
telegram  to  President  Hayes,  advising  the  im 
mediate  announcement  of  a  date  by  him  when 
he  would  order  the  withdrawal  of  the  United 
States  soldiery  from  the  support  of  the  Packard 
government.  By  this  time  the  Nicholls  legis 
lature  had  secured  a  quorum  of  members  in 
both  houses  whose  elections  had  been  certified 
by  the  election  machinery  of  both  governments, 
and  the  Packard  legislature  had  been  left  with 
out  a  quorum  in  either  house,  under  any  theory 
of  the  election  law,  and  the  commission  had  also 
reached  the  conclusion  that  Packard's  govern 
ment  outside  of  the  precincts  of  the  State  House 
had  no  existence,  and  never  would  have  any  un 
less  held  up  at  every  point  by  the  national  army. 
The  commission  had  also  reached  the  conclu 
sion  that  the  withdrawal  of  the  United  States 
troops  would  not  result  in  any  insurrectionary 
movements,  but  that  their  retention  would 
probably,  almost  certainly,  do  so. 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  87 

The  President  issued  the  order  for  the  with 
drawal  of  the  national  military  from  the  sup 
port  of  the  Packard  government,  and  on  the 
24th  of  April  it  was  executed,  and  the  final  step 
was  taken  in  restoring  all  the  States  of  the  South 
to  their  full  membership  in  the  Union,  as  self- 
governing  bodies  within  the  limits  of  the  Con 
stitution.  Packard  protested,  but  yielded  more 
easily  and  gracefully  than  had  been  expected. 
Wade,  Elaine,  Garrison,  Phillips,  Butler,  and  all 
the  rest  of  their  kind  poured  upon  the  President 
their  vials  of  wrath,  some  in  the  language  of 
sorrow  and  pity  for  the  backsliding  President, 
and  others  in  the  language  of  abuse  and  vitu 
peration  for  the  treacherous  man  in  the  White 
House.  I  have  no  doubt  that  they  were  all, 
except  perhaps  Blaine,  entirely  sincere.  But 
they  were  all  wofully  mistaken.  No  violence 
followed  the  withdrawal  of  the  troops  anywhere. 
Peace  and  prosperity  and  contentment  were  re 
stored.  The  State  government  became  honest, 
efficient,  and  economical.  And  the  rights  of 
the  negroes  were  more  perfectly  realized  than 
ever  before.  Some  of  the  disappointed  ones 
undertook  to  blacken  the  President's  character 


88        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

by  claiming  that  the  President's  action  was 
prompted  by  an  agreement  made  by  him,  or 
for  him,  by  two  of  his  Northern  friends,  with 
prominent  Southerners,  in  order  to  secure  their 
acquiescence  in  the  Congressional  canvass  of  the 
electoral  vote.  But  the  President  and  his  ad 
visers  demanded  immediate  publicity  as  to 
every  item  of  the  charge,  and  it  was  at  once 
manifest  that  he  had  given  no  assurances  pri 
vately  that  were  anything  more  than  a  reitera 
tion  of  his  public  statements,  and  that  his  friends 
had  made  no  promises  for  him,  and  had  done 
nothing  more  than  express  their  own  private 
opinions  that  President  Hayes  was  a  man  of 
his  word,  and  would  undoubtedly  undertake 
the  realization  of  the  policies  announced  in  his 
letter  of  acceptance  of  the  nomination  to  the 
presidency,  and  in  his  inaugural  address  upon 
induction  into  office. 

No  braver,  wiser,  or  more  patriotic  thing  was 
ever  done  by  any  occupant  of  the  presidential 
chair  than  President  Hayes'  work  for  the  paci 
fication  of  the  South.  He  disregarded  entirely 
the  arguments  of  the  Stalwarts  that  his  own 
title  to  the  office  was  nullified  by  his  failure  to 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  89 

sustain  that  of  the  Republican  claimants  in 
South  Carolina  and  Louisiana,  and  that  he  was 
destroying  the  Republican  party  in  the  South 
and  betraying  the  freedmen.  He  saw  through 
the  sophistry  of  all  this  and  disregarded  en 
tirely  any  effect  which  his  action  might  have 
upon  his  own  personal  political  fortunes.  His 
only  thought  was  for  justice  and  the  welfare  of 
the  whole  country,  and  he  held  as  the  first 
article  of  his  political  faith  the  principle  so  hap 
pily  formulated  by  himself:  "He  serves  his 
party  best  who  serves  his  country  best."  In 
the  solution  of  the  Southern  problem  President 
Hayes  showed  himself  to  be  a  statesman  of  the 
first  order  and  of  the  broadest  national  type. 
The  problem  itself,  however,  was  not  one  of 
great  intricacy.  It  was  rather  one  of  plain  and 
elemental  justice,  one  in  which  the  way  of  solu 
tion  selected  by  him  was  supported  by  a  major 
ity  of  the  people  at  the  North.  It  was  against 
the  Stalwart  faction  of  his  own  party  and  a  few 
fanatics  that  he  had  to  exercise  his  firmness  of 
purpose.  The  liberal  faction  of  his  own  party, 
the  Democrats  of  the  North,  and  the  whites  of 
the  South  were  with  him.  The  greatest  strug- 


90        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

gle  which  he  had  with  himself  over  the  subject 
was  the  question  whether  he  was  deserting  the 
just  cause  of  the  black  man  and  delivering  him 
back  to  servitude.  Had  he  not  been  able  to 
convince  himself  that  his  policy  of  restoring 
the  autonomy  of  the  State  governments  in  the 
South  would  not  lead  to  this  result,  he  certainly 
could  never  have  followed  it,  no  matter  how 
unanimous  the  approval  of  it  may  have  been. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  financial  question  was 
distressingly  intricate,  and  the  solution  of  it 
required  broadness,  acuteness,  and  originality 
in  economic  reasoning.  It  seems  to  me  that  it 
was  in  the  handling  of  this  question  that  Presi 
dent  Hayes  manifested,  in  highest  degree,  his 
superiority  as  an  independent  thinker  and  also 
his  uncompromising  devotion  to  principle. 

As  we  have  seen,  the  monetary  situation  at 
the  time  of  the  accession  of  Mr.  Hayes  to  the 
presidency  was  most  unsatisfactory.  The  coun 
try  had  not  recovered  from  the  panic  of  1873, 
and  it  was  pretty  generally  believed  that  the 
chief  cause  of  all  trouble  was  the  scarcity  of 
money.  We  had  nearly  three  hundred  and  fifty 
millions  of  greenbacks,  i.  e.9  of  irredeemable 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  91 

legal-tender  paper  of  the  government  in  circula 
tion,  and  about  as  much  more  of  national  bank 
notes  secured  by  government  bonds  and  green 
backs,  and  a  bonded  indebtedness  of  nearly 
fifteen  hundred  millions  of  dollars,  upon  about 
half  of  which  we  were  paying  six  per  cent  in 
terest,  and  upon  the  other  half  five  per  cent. 
We  had  a  law  for  the  resumption  of  specie  pay 
ment,  i.  e.9  for  redeeming  our  paper  money  in 
coin  on  and  after  January  1, 1879.  We  had  also 
the  law  of  1873  suspending  the  coinage  of  the 
silver  dollar,  which  virtually  made  coin  to  mean 
gold  coin,  as  in  fact  had  been  the  case  since  1853. 
It  was  in  the  face  of  this  situation  that  Presi 
dent  Hayes  said  in  his  inaugural  address :  "Upon 
the  currency  question,  I  may  be  permitted  to 
repeat  here  the  statement  made  in  my  letter 
of  acceptance  that,  in  my  judgment,  the  feel 
ing  of  uncertainty  inseparable  from  an  irre 
deemable  paper  currency,  with  its  fluctuation  of 
values,  is  one  of  the  greatest  obstacles  to  a  re 
turn  to  prosperous  times.  The  only  safe  paper 
currency  is  one  which  rests  upon  a  coin  basis, 
and  is  at  all  times  promptly  convertible  into 
coin.  I  adhere  to  the  views  heretofore  expressed 


92        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

i 

by  me  in  favor  of  Congressional  legislation  in 
behalf  of  an  early  resumption  of  specie  pay 
ments,  and  I  am  satisfied  not  only  that  this  is 
wise,  but  that  the  interests  as  well  as  the  pub 
lic  sentiment  of  the  country  imperatively  de 
mand  it." 

Notwithstanding  this  warning,  the  State  con 
ventions  of  the  Democratic  and  Greenback 
parties  which  occurred  in  the  summer  of  1877 
declared  in  favor  of  a  repeal  of  the  Resumption 
Act,  and  of  the  passage  of  an  act  rehabilitating 
silver  as  full  legal-tender  money  on  a  par  with 
gold,  and  providing  for  its  free  and  unlimited 
coinage  at  the  old  rate  of  16  to  1,  and  the  State 
conventions  of  the  Republican  party  west  of 
the  Alleghanies  pronounced  themselves  in  favor 
of  the  remonetizing  of  silver. 

In  the  special  session  of  Congress  in  the  au 
tumn  of  1877,  the  Bills  for  both  purposes  passed 
the  House  of  Representatives  in  November  by 
tremendous  majorities.  The  Senate,  which  was 
still  Republican,  as  to  the  majority,  took  up  the 
Silver  Bill,  referred  it  to  its  finance  committee, 
and  on  report  of  this  committee  placed  the 
Bill  on  its  calendar.  The  special  session  of  Con- 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  93 

gress  was  now  near  its  end,  but  the  Silver  Bill 
was  in  position  for  consideration  by  the  next 
regular  session,  which  would  open  almost  im 
mediately,  i.  e.,  on  the  first  Monday  of  the  fol 
lowing  month. 

This  was  the  situation  which  moved  Presi 
dent  Hayes  to  incorporate  in  his  first  annual 
message,  of  December  3,  1877,  a  discussion  of 
the  monetary  question  which  has  never  been 
surpassed,  if  equalled,  for  correctness,  concise 
ness,  and  exhaustiveness  anywhere  in  our  eco 
nomic  literature. 

Naturally  a  mind  like  his  would  regard  the 
subject  from  a  moral  as  well  as  an  economic 
point  of  view.  The  scrupulously  honest  ful 
filment  of  all  financial  obligations  on  the  part 
of  the  government  and  on  the  part  of  individuals 
was,  of  course,  the  first  article  of  his  financial 
creed.  Upon  this  part  of  the  subject  his  words 
were  as  follows:  "The  policy  of  resumption 
should  be  pursued  by  every  suitable  means,  and 
no  legislation  would  be  wise  that  should  dis 
parage  the  importance  or  retard  the  attainment 
of  that  result.  I  must  adhere  to  my  most  ear 
nest  conviction  that  any  wavering  in  purpose  or 


94        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

unsteadiness  in  methods,  so  far  from  avoiding 
or  reducing  the  inconvenience  inseparable  from 
the  transition  from  an  irredeemable  to  a  re 
deemable  paper  currency,  would  only  tend  to 
increased  and  prolonged  disturbance  in  values, 
and,  unless  retrieved,  must  end  in  serious  dis 
order,  dishonor,  and  disaster  in  the  financial 
affairs  of  the  government  and  of  the  people. 
The  mischiefs  which  I  apprehend,  and  urgently 
deprecate,  are  confined  to  no  class  of  the  peo 
ple,  indeed,  but  seem  to  me  most  certainly  to 
threaten  the  industrious  masses,  whether  their 
occupations  are  of  skilled  or  common  labor. 
To  them,  it  seems  to  me,  it  is  of  prime  impor 
tance  that  their  labor  should  be  compensated  in 
money  which  is  itself  fixed  in  exchangeable  value 
by  being  irrevocably  measured  by  the  labor 
necessary  to  its  production.  This  permanent 
quality  of  the  money  of  the  people  is  sought  for, 
and  can  only  be  gained,  by  the  resumption  of 
specie  payments.  The  rich,  the  speculative, 
the  operating,  the  money-dealing  classes  may 
not  always  feel  the  mischiefs  of,  or  may  find 
casual  profits  in,  a  variable  currency,  but  the 
misfortunes  of  such  a  currency  to  those  who 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  95 

are  paid  in  salaries  or  wages  are  inevitable 
and  remediless."  And  again:  "I  respectfully 
recommend  to  Congress  that  in  any  legislation 
providing  for  a  silver  coinage,  and  imparting  to 
it  the  quality  of  legal  tender,  there  be  impressed 
upon  the  measure  a  firm  provision  exempting 
the  payment  of  the  public  debt,  heretofore 
issued  and  now  outstanding,  from  payment, 
either  of  principal  or  interest,  in  any  coinage  of 
less  commercial  value  than  the  present  gold 
coinage  of  the  country." 

The  honest  dollar  for  honest  labor  and  the 
financial  honor  of  the  country  were  placed  by 
him  above  all  interests,  in  fact  were  the  highest 
interest.  When  these  things  were  secured,  then 
and  not  till  then  would  he  consent  to  consider 
the  subject  from  the  point  of  view  of  economic 
policy  purely.  And  when  he  came  to  this  side 
of  the  question,  he  manifested  in  his  treatment 
of  it  a  soundness  and  foresightedness  not  equalled 
by  any  of  his  contemporaries  and  not  surpassed 
by  any  who  have  come  after  him.  He  said: 
"In  adapting  the  new  silver  coinage  to  the  or 
dinary  uses  of  currency  in  the  every-day  trans 
actions  of  life,  and  prescribing  the  quality  of 


96        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

legal  tender  to  be  assigned  to  it,  a  considera 
tion  of  the  first  importance  should  be  so  to  ad 
just  the  ratio  between  the  silver  and  the  gold 
coinage  as  to  accomplish  the  desired  end  of 
maintaining  the  circulation  of  the  two  metallic 
currencies,  and  keeping  up  the  volume  of  the 
two  precious  metals  as  our  intrinsic  money.  It 
is  a  mixed  question  for  scientific  reasoning  and 
historical  experience  to  determine  how  far,  and 
by  what  methods,  a  practical  equilibrium  can 
be  maintained  which  will  keep  both  metals  in 
circulation  in  their  appropriate  spheres  of  com 
mon  use.  An  absolute  equality  of  commercial 
value,  free  from  disturbing  fluctuations,  is  hardly 
attainable,  and  without  it  an  unlimited  legal 
tender  for  private  transactions  assigned  to  both 
metals  would  irresistibly  tend  to  drive  out  of 
circulation  the  dearer  coinage,  and  disappoint 
the  principal  object  proposed  by  the  legislation 
in  view.  I  apprehend,  therefore,  that  two  con 
ditions,  one,  that  of  a  near  approach  to  equality 
of  commercial  value  between  the  gold  and  silver 
coinage  of  the  same  denomination,  and  the 
other,  that  of  a  limitation  of  the  amounts  for 
which  the  silver  coinage  is  to  be  a  legal  tender,  are 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  97 

essential  to  maintaining  both  in  circulation.  If 
these  conditions  can  be  successfully  observed, 
the  issue  from  the  mint  of  silver  dollars  would 
afford  material  assistance  to  the  community  in 
the  transition  to  redeemable  paper  money,  and 
would  facilitate  the  resumption  of  specie  pay 
ment  and  its  permanent  establishment.  With 
out  these  conditions  I  fear  that  only  mischief 
and  misfortune  would  flow  from  a  coinage  of 
silver  dollars  with  the  quality  of  unlimited  legal 
tender,  even  in  private  transactions." 

It  is  probable  that  these  wise  words  of  Presi 
dent  Hayes  had  some  effect  in  preventing  the 
passage  in  the  Senate  of  the  House  Bill  repealing 
the  Resumption  Act,  but  they  did  not  prevent 
the  passage  of  the  Silver  Bill.  A  large  number 
of  the  conservative  men  of  the  country,  of  the 
Republican  party  as  well  as  of  the  Democratic 
party,  had  become  inoculated  with  the  craze. 
The  campaign  for  free  silver  became  a  sort  of 
holy  war  for  the  "restoration  of  the  people's 
birthright."  Nevertheless,  these  publicly  pro 
nounced  views  of  the  President  must  have  had 
some  effect  in  imposing  conservative  action  on 
the  Silver  Bill  in  the  Senate.  Under  the  leader- 


98        THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

ship  of  Senator  Allison  the  Bland  Bill  was  modi 
fied  in  several  very  important  particulars.  In 
place  of  the  free-coinage  provision  on  private 
account,  the  Bland- Allison  Bill  allowed  only  the 
coinage  of  silver  on  government  account,  limit 
ing  the  amount  which  the  government  might 
coin  to  four  millions  of  dollars  a  month,  and 
fixing  the  amount  which  it  must  coin  at  two 
millions  of  dollars  a  month,  and  covering  the 
seigniorage  into  the  treasury  of  the  United 
States.  The  process  intended  by  the  Bill  was 
as  follows:  The  government  should  purchase 
from  two  to  four  million  dollars'  worth  of  silver 
bullion  per  month,  paying  gold  for  it;  coin  be 
tween  two  and  four  millions  of  dollars  per  month 
at  the  ratio  of  sixteen  ounces  of  silver  to  one 
ounce  of  gold;  allow  the  deposit  of  such  silver 
dollars  in  the  treasury  of  the  United  States,  and 
issue  silver  certificates  upon  them  in  order  to 
facilitate  their  circulation.  The  Bill  made  these 
silver  dollars  full  legal  tender  in  the  payment  of 
all  debts,  public  or  private,  past  or  future,  "ex 
cept  where  otherwise  expressly  stipulated  in  the 
contract."  In  this  form  the  Bill  passed  the 
Senate,  was  grudgingly  concurred  in  by  the 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  99 

House,  and  sent  to  the  President  for  his  signa 
ture. 

The  pressure  upon  the  President  to  approve 
it  was  enormous.  It  was  declared  by  the  press 
of  the  whole  country  that  the  people  by  over 
whelming  majority  were  in  favor  of  it,  certainly 
the  majority  of  both  the  Democratic  and  Re 
publican  members  in  both  houses  of  Congress 
had  voted  in  favor  of  it.  Even  Secretary  Sher 
man,  the  chief  financial  officer  of  the  govern 
ment,  and  by  reputation  the  soundest  financier 
in  the  country,  favored  it,  or  at  least  thought 
best  not  to  oppose  it.  He  thought  that  the 
country  could  keep  the  two  million  dollars  a 
month  of  silver  addition  to  the  legal-tender  coin 
money  on  a  par  with  gold  indefinitely.  Not  so 
the  President.  He  saw  clearer  than  Sherman, 
clearer  than  all  the  leaders  of  both  parties  put 
together,  and  clearer  than  all  the  people,  that 
this  amount  of  silver  dollars  could  not  be  kept 
on  a  par  with  gold  dollars,  and  that  to  pay  our 
bonded  debt  with  them  would  be  partial  repu 
diation.  He,  therefore,  vetoed  the  Bill  without 
any  regard  to  the  effect  of  the  veto  upon  his 
personal  or  political  fortunes,  and  although  he 


100      THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

knew  perfectly  well  that  his  veto  would  be  over 
ridden.  The  Bill  was  passed  over  the  veto, 
and  we  started  on  the  downward  course  pre 
dicted  by  President  Hayes.  Year  by  year,  yea, 
month  by  month,  the  gold  in  the  treasury  was 
exhausted  to  buy  silver  bullion,  to  the  enrich 
ment  of  the  silver  kings  of  the  Rockies,  the  com 
mercial  value  of  the  silver  dollars  steadily  de 
clined  as  they  piled  higher  and  higher  in  the 
vaults  of  the  treasury,  and  in  fifteen  years  the 
crisis  of  1893  came  upon  us.  Then  the  whole 
country  saw  how  high  above  all  his  colleagues 
and  contemporaries  President  Hayes  had  stood 
in  prescience  and  moral  firmness. 

The  Resumption  Act  still  stood,  however,  by 
the  unconquerable  support  given  it  by  the 
President  and  Secretary  Sherman.  By  rigid 
economy  in  governmental  expenditure,  and  by 
borrowing  gold  through  bond  issues,  the  adminis 
tration  succeeded  in  accumulating  enough  gold 
in  the  treasury,  despite  the  enforced  silver  pur 
chases,  to  warrant  the  government  in  declaring 
on  January  1,  1879,  that  it  would  pay  coin  for 
paper  whenever  presented.  So  soon  as  the  hold 
ers  of  government  notes  knew  that  they  could 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  101 

have  coin  for  them  on  asking,  they  did  not 
want  it.  More  coin  was  offered  the  treasury 
for  notes  than  was  demanded  from  the  treasury 
for  notes.  The  President  foresaw  that  this 
would  be  the  result,  and  not  wishing  to  have 
anything  interfere  with  the  operation  of  the  Re 
sumption  Law,  he  had,  in  his  annual  message 
of  December,  1878,  recommended  Congress  to 
abstain  from  any  financial  legislation.  By  the 
close  of  the  year  1879,  however,  resumption  was 
so  completely  established,  and  business  had  so 
revived,  that  he  could,  without  apprehension, 
request  further  legislation  by  Congress  for  im 
proving  the  financial  system. 

In  his  annual  message  of  December  1,  1879, 
after  having  referred  to  the  fact  of  resumption 
and  the  prosperity  of  the  country  in  conse 
quence  of  it,  and  to  the  fact  that  since  the  Bland- 
Allison  silver  coinage  law  had  gone  into  effect 
and  down  to  November  1, 1879, 45,000,850  silver 
dollars  had  been  coined,  of  which  only  12,700, 
344  had  gone  into  circulation  while  32,300,506 
still  remained  stacked  up  in  the  treasury,  repre 
senting  just  that  much  depletion  of  the  gold  re 
serve  and  consequently  just  so  much  money 


102      THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

withdrawn  from  circulation,  he  went  on  to  say: 
"I  would  strongly  urge  upon  Congress  the  im 
portance  of  authorizing  the  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury  to  suspend  the  coinage  of  silver  dollars 
upon  the  present  legal  ratio.  The  market  value 
of  the  silver  dollar  being  uniformly  and  largely 
less  than  the  market  value  of  the  gold  dollar,  it 
is  obviously  impracticable  to  maintain  them  at 
par  with  each  other  if  both  are  coined  without 
limit.  If  the  cheaper  coin  is  forced  into  circu 
lation,  it  will,  if  coined  without  limit,  soon  be 
come  the  sole  standard  of  value,  and  thus  defeat 
the  desired  object,  which  is  a  currency  of  both 
gold  and  silver,  which  shall  be  of  equivalent 
value,  dollar  for  dollar,  with  the  universally  rec 
ognized  money  of  the  world."  The  President 
saw  clearly  then  that  we  could  not  keep  a  vol 
ume  of  silver  dollars,  increasing  by  two  millions 
of  dollars  a  month,  on  a  par  with  gold;  that  we 
should  exhaust  our  gold  to  pay  the  mine  owners 
for  the  silver  bullion,  and  that  we  should  soon 
be  left  on  a  monometallic  basis  of  silver.  He 
was  in  favor  of  coining  all  the  silver  money 
which  could  be  maintained  in  circulation  on  a 
par  with  gold,  but  not  a  dollar  more,  and  he 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  103 

saw  in  the  piling-up  of  the  silver  dollars  in  the 
treasury  the  unanswerable  evidence  that  we  had 
already  gone  too  far. 

The  President  said  further:  "The  retirement 
from  circulation  of  United  States  notes,  with 
the  capacity  of  legal  tender  in  private  contracts, 
is  a  step  to  be  taken  in  our  progress  towards  a 
safe  and  stable  currency,  which  should  be  ac 
cepted  as  the  policy  and  duty  of  the  govern 
ment  and  the  interest  and  security  of  the  peo 
ple.  It  is  my  firm  conviction  that  the  issue  of 
legal-tender  paper  money,  based  wholly  upon 
the  authority  and  credit  of  the  government, 
except  in  extreme  emergency,  is  without  war 
rant  in  the  Constitution  and  a  violation  of 
sound  financial  principles." 

Had  Congress  heeded  the  advice  of  the  Presi 
dent  and  taken  then  the  steps  recommended  by 
him,  the  finances  of  the  country  would  have 
been  placed  upon  a  perfectly  solid  and  endur 
ing  basis,  and  we  should  have  been  saved  all  the 
loss  and  trouble  which  we  have  since  suffered 
upon  that  subject. 

The  President  waited  anxiously  another  year 
for  Congress  to  show  some  response  to  his  ap- 


104      THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

peal,  but  in  vain.  He  knew,  however,  that  he 
was  right,  and  he  had  the  courage  of  his  convic 
tions.  Undauntedly  he  made  a  final  effort  in 
his  last  annual  message  to  move  Congress  to 
complete  the  good  work  done  by  his  adminis 
tration  in  what  we  may  call  the  financial  re 
construction  of  the  Union. 

He  said:  "There  are  still  in  existence  uncan- 
celled  $346,681,016  of  United  States  legal-ten 
der  notes.  These  notes  were  authorized  as  a 
war  measure,  made  necessary  by  the  exigencies 
of  the  conflict  in  which  the  United  States  was 
then  engaged.  The  preservation  of  the  nation's 
existence  required,  in  the  judgment  of  Congress, 
an  issue  of  legal-tender  paper  money.  That  it 
served  well  the  purpose  for  which  it  was  then 
created  is  not  questioned,  but  the  employment 
of  the  notes  as  paper  money  indefinitely,  after 
the  accomplishment  of  the  object  for  which 
they  were  provided,  was  not  contemplated  by 
the  framers  of  the  law  under  which  they  were 
issued.  These  notes  long  since  became,  like  any 
other  pecuniary  obligation  of  the  government, 
a  debt  to  be  paid,  and  when  paid  to  be  cancelled 
as  a  mere  evidence  of  an  indebtedness  no  longer 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  105 

existing.  I,  therefore,  repeat  what  was  said  in 
the  annual  message  of  last  year,  that  the  retire 
ment  from  circulation  of  United  States  notes, 
with  the  capacity  of  legal  tender  in  private 
contracts,  is  a  step  to  be  taken  in  our  progress 
towards  a  safe  and  stable  currency,  which  should 
be  accepted  as  the  policy  and  duty  of  the  govern 
ment  and  the  interest  and  security  of  the  peo 
ple." 

Upon  the  silver  question  he  said:  "At  the 
time  of  the  passage  of  the  act  now  in  force  re 
quiring  the  coinage  of  silver  dollars,  fixing  their 
value,  and  giving  them  legal-tender  character, 
it  was  believed  by  many  of  the  supporters  of 
the  measure  that  the  silver  dollar,  which  it 
authorized,  would  speedily  become,  under  the 
operations  of  the  law,  of  equivalent  value  with 
the  gold  dollar.  There  were  other  supporters 
of  the  Bill,  who,  while  they  doubted  as  to  the 
probability  of  this  result,  nevertheless  were 
willing  to  give  the  proposed  experiment  a  fair 
trial,  with  a  view  to  stop  the  coinage,  if  experi 
ence  should  prove  that  the  silver  dollar  author 
ized  by  the  Bill  continued  to  be  of  less  com 
mercial  value  than  the  standard  gold  dollar. 


106       THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

The  coinage  of  silver  dollars,  under  the  act 
referred  to,  began  in  March,  1878,  and  has 
been  continued  as  required  by  the  act.  The 
average  rate  per  month  to  the  present  time  has 
been  $2,276,492.  The  total  amount  coined 
prior  to  the  1st  of  November  last  was  $72,847,- 
750.  Of  this  amount  $47,084,450  remain  in  the 
treasury,  and  only  $25,763,^291  are  in  the  hands 
of  the  people.  A  constant  effort  has  been  made 
to  keep  this  currency  in  circulation,  and  con 
siderable  expense  has  been  necessarily  incurred 
for  this  purpose;  but  its  return  to  the  treasury 
is  prompt  and  sure.  Contrary  to  the  confident 
anticipation  of  the  friends  of  the  measure  at 
the  time  of  its  adoption,  the  value  of  the  silver 
dollar,  containing  four  hundred  and  twelve  and 
one-half  grains  of  silver,  has  not  increased. 
During  the  year  prior  to  the  passage  of  the  Bill 
authorizing  its  coinage,  the  market  value  of  the 
silver  which  it  contained  was  from  ninety  to 
ninety-two  cents  as  compared  with  the  stand 
ard  gold  dollar.  During  the  last  year  the  aver 
age  market  value  of  the  silver  dollar  has  been 
eighty-eight  and  a  half  cents. 

"It  is  obvious  that  the  legislation  of  the  last 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  107 

Congress  in  regard  to  silver,  so  far  as  it  was 
based  upon  an  anticipated  rise  in  the  value  of 
silver  as  a  result  of  that  legislation,  has  failed 
to  produce  the  effect  then  predicted.  The 
longer  the  law  remains  in  force,  requiring,  as  it 
does,  the  coinage  of  a  nominal  dollar  which  in 
reality  is  not  a  dollar,  the  greater  becomes  the 
danger  that  this  country  will  be  forced  to  ac 
cept  a  single  metal  as  the  sole  legal  standard  of 
value  in  circulation,  and  this  a  standard  of  less 
value  than  it  purports  to  be  worth  in  the  recog 
nized  money  of  the  world."  The  President 
then  besought  Congress  to  "repeal  so  much  of 
existing  legislation  as  required  the  coinage  of 
silver  dollars  containing  only  four  hundred  and 
twelve  and  one-half  grains  of  silver,  and  in  its 
stead  authorize  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury 
to  coin  silver  dollars  of  equivalent  value,  as 
bullion,  with  gold  dollars." 

But  Congress  still  refused  to  listen  to  the 
voice  of  reason.  The  majority  in  both  houses 
were  Democrats,  nearly  all  of  whom  were  wedded 
to  both  the  greenback  and  free-silver  heresies, 
and  many,  nay  most,  of  the  Republicans  were 
laboring  under  the  same  delusions.  Even  Sher- 


108      THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

man  was  still  undecided  about  the  retirement 
of  the  greenbacks.  President  Hayes  was,  how 
ever,  entirely  clear  in  his  mind  upon  these  sub 
tle  and  complicated  questions.  He  was  wiser 
than  any  or  all  of  his  colleagues  and  contem 
poraries  in  regard  to  them.  Taught  by  bitter 
experience,  we  have  taken  one  of  the  steps  which 
the  President  recommended,  viz.:  the  suspen 
sion  of  the  coinage  of  legal-tender  silver  dollars, 
but  the  other  menace  to  our  monetary  system, 
the  three  hundred  and  forty-six  millions  of 
greenback  currency,  still  remains,  making  our 
currency  rigid  instead  of  flexible,  redundant  at 
times  when  it  should  be  curtailed,  and  insuffi 
cient  at  times  when  it  should  be  plentiful. 
Every  sound  financier  knows  that  they  ought 
to  be  retired,  but  the  Congress  and  the  voters 
are  still  not  educated  up  to  the  adoption  of 
such  a  measure.  As  to  this,  President  Hayes 
still  remains  the  prophet  ahead  of  his  time,  but 
the  true  prophet  whose  time  will  surely  come 
and  whose  teachings  upon  this  subject  also  will 
surely  prevail. 

I  cannot,  however,  close  this  short  account  of 
President  Hayes'  great  services  to  the  financial 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  109 

development  of  his  country  without  referring 
briefly  to  the  great  success  of  his  administra 
tion  in  the  refunding  of  the  public  debt  and  the 
great  saving,  in  interest  payment,  to  the  nation. 
During  the  first  three  years  of  his  term  a  sav 
ing  of  some  fifteen  million  dollars  per  annum 
had  been  effected  in  this  manner,  and  he  and  his 
able  Secretary,  Mr.  Sherman,  had  matured  a 
plan  and  proposed  it  to  Congress,  which  in 
the  last  year  of  his  term  would  have  saved  the 
country  twelve  million  dollars  more  per  annum. 
The  Democratic  Congress,  however,  loaded  the 
proposed  measure  down  with  wild  amendments 
which,  Mr.  Sherman  said,  would  have  made 
"the  execution  of  the  law  practically  impossi 
ble." 

Among  these  amendments  was  one  which  the 
President  believed  would  prove  most  destruc 
tive  to  the  national  banking  system.  Its  effect 
would  have  been,  as  he  thought,  and  rightly 
thought,  to  have  concentrated  the  banking 
facilities  in  the  relatively  few  large  cities  to  the 
great  disadvantage  of  the  smaller  cities  and 
towns  and  the  mass  of  the  people,  especially 
in  the  agricultural  communities.  Much  as  it 


110  PRESIDENT  HAYES 

would  have  gratified  him  to  have  been  able  to 
say  that  the  financial  operations  of  his  adminis 
tration  had  saved  the  country,  in  the  single 
matter  of  the  refunding  of  the  debt,  over 
twenty-five  millions  of  dollars  in  annual  in 
terest,  instead  of  fifteen  millions,  he,  never 
theless,  decided  that  he  must  forego  the  glory 
of  this  statement  to  do  his  country  the  greater, 
though  to  the  people  far  less  apparent,  good  of 
preserving  the  national  banking  system  against 
monopolistic  tendencies  and  later  monopolistic 
development.  He  therefore  vetoed  the  bill  and 
thereby  prevented  its  enactment  into  law.  This 
was  his  last  great  service  to  the  cause  of  sound 
"public  finance,  and  it  manifested  not  only  his 
deep  insight  into  this  intricate  subject,  but  his 
singleness  of  purpose  and  his  great  power  of 
dealing  with  everything  touching  his  public 
duty  entirely  objectively,  and  without  any^re- 
gard  whatsoever  to  the  effect  of  his  decisions 
upon  his  personal  or  political  fortunes  or  to 
the  glory  of  success. 


LECTURE  IV 

THE   RE-ESTABLISHMENT   OF   THE   GOVERN 
MENT  UPON  ITS  CONSTITUTIONAL 
FOUNDATION 

THE  Civil  War  had  subordinated  all  de 
partments  of  the  government  to  the 
executive  as  the  commander-in-chief  of 
the  armed  forces,  and  the  period  of  reconstruc 
tion  had  carried  the  pendulum  to  the  other  end 
of  the  arc,  and  made  the  legislature  supreme. 
It  remained  for  President  Hayes'  administra 
tion  to  restore  the  constitutional  equilibrium  of 
independent  co-ordinate  departments,  each  act 
ing  within  its  own  constitutionally  prescribed 
sphere  and  all  co-operating  in  the  constitution 
ally  prescribed  manner. 

President  Hayes'  activities  as  directed  to 
ward  this  end  may  be  distinguished  under  three 
categories.  First,  his  doctrine  as  to  the  presi 
dential  term.  Second,  his  opposition  to  parlia 
mentary  government  as  unconstitutional  and 

111 


112      THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

as  irreconcilable  with  the  principles  of  the 
Republic.  Third,  his  reform  of  the  civil  service. 
First.  It  was  President  Hayes'  firm  belief 
that  the  admissibility  of  a  second  term  in  the 
presidential  office  furnished  temptations  dan 
gerous  to,  if  not  absolutely  incompatible  with, 
the  most  effective  discharge  of  the  duties  of  the 
great  office.  He  was  convinced  that  it  was  too 
severe  a  draft  upon  human  nature  to  expect 
that  any  man  under  the  temptation  of  securing 
a  second  term  would  not  have  his  thoughts, 
time,  and  energies  diverted,  in  a  greater  or  less 
measure,  from  the  discharge  of  his  official  duties 
to  the  work  of  bringing  about  his  renomina- 
tion  and  his  re-election.  He  also  believed  that 
the  policies  and  official  activities  of  a  President 
under  such  a  temptation  would  be,  more  or  less, 
tainted  with  selfish  considerations,  which  would 
blind  his  vision  and  demoralize  his  conscience. 
And,  finally,  he  was  clearly  convinced  that 
any  reform  in  the  official  service,  in  middle  and 
lower  instance,  could  be  secured  only  by  eman 
cipating  the  chief  executive  from  any  prospec 
tive  political  obligations  to  these  officials  or 
anybody  else. 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  113 

We  find,  consequently,  in  Mr.  Hayes'  letter 
of  acceptance  of  the  nomination  to  the  presi 
dency  by  the  national  convention  of  the  Re 
publican  party,  his  firm  and  unalterable  decla 
ration  that  he  would  not  accept  the  nomination 
for  a  second  term,  and  in  his  inaugural  address 
the  proposal  that  a  constitutional  amendment 
should  be  adopted  forbidding  a  re-election  to 
the  presidential  office  and  extending  the  single 
term  from  a  period  of  four  to  a  period  of  six 
years.  Nearly  forty  years  have  now  passed 
since  President  Hayes  made  this  wise  recom 
mendation,  and  it  is  not  yet  realized.  I  have 
no  doubt  that  it  will  be  finally  realized.  I  am 
almost  encouraged  to  think  that  it  is  nearer  re 
alization  now  than  ever  before.  Men  were  in 
clined  to  regard  it  then  as  a  far-fetched  ideal 
for  transcendentalists  to  amuse  themselves  with. 
Now  it  is  taken  seriously  and  is  a  plank  in  the 
platform  of  one  of  the  great  parties.  Come  to 
it  we  must,  if  we  would  have  a  President  of  the 
whole  country,  with  all  his  thought,  time,  and 
energy  devoted  to  his  official  work,  and  an  of 
ficial  system  capable,  efficient,  and  incorrupt 
ible. 


114      THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

Secondly,  President  Hayes'  wise  and  cou 
rageous  struggle  against  the  attempt  to  foist 
parliamentary  government  upon  our  country 
was  much  more  immediately  successful.  The 
Constitution  of  the  United  States  provides  that 
all  bills  for  the  raising  of  revenue  shall  originate 
in  the  House  of  Representatives.  Out  of  this 
power  of  the  sole  initiative  of  tax  measures,  the 
House  of  Representatives  sought  to  develop  a 
control  of  the  entire  budget,  both  of  income  and 
appropriation,  such  as  that  exercised  by  the 
British  House  of  Commons,  and  then  to  use 
this  power  for  forcing  the  consent  of  the  Senate 
and  the  President  to  legislation  contrary  to 
their  judgment  and  wishes.  The  course  en 
tered  on  by  the  House  of  Representatives  for 
the  attainment  of  this  end  was  to  tack  the  leg 
islation,  which  it  undertook  to  force  through 
against  the  opposition  of  the  Senate  and  the 
President,  to  the  appropriation  Bills  for  the 
support  of  the  government,  and  hold  up  these 
until  such  legislation  should  be  agreed  to  by 
them.  It  was  not  exactly  a  new  thing  at  the 
time  of  the  accession  of  Mr.  Hayes  to  the  presi 
dency,  but  it  had  never  before  come  to  be  so 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  115 

manifestly  a  struggle  between  two  systems  of 
government,  the  parliamentary  system  and  the 
check-and-balance  system.  The  struggle  be 
gan  in  the  session  of  Congress  of  the  year 
1878-9. 

The  Democrats  had  the  majority  in  the 
House  of  Representatives,  and  the  Republicans 
in  the  Senate.  The  Democrats  from  the  South 
ern  States  held  the  balance  of  power  in  their 
party.  They  were  determined  to  abolish  the 
acts  of  Congress  relating  to  the  disqualification 
of  those  who  had  taken  part  in  the  rebellion  to 
act  as  jurors  in  the  courts,  and  to  the  employ 
ment  of  the  army  of  the  United  States  to  keep 
the  peace  at  the  polls,  and  finally  to  the  control 
of  the  national  elections  by  national  officials. 
The  Democratic  House  attached  provisions  re 
pealing  these  laws  to  several  of  the  most  im 
portant  appropriation  Bills.  The  Republican 
Senate  refused  to  pass  the  Bills  with  the  riders, 
and  the  House  refused  to  pass  the  Bills  without 
them.  The  session  closed  on  the  4th  day  of 
March,  1879,  without  having  made  any  pro 
vision  for  the  support  of  the  most  important 
branches  of  the  administration. 


116      THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

President  Hayes  was,  therefore,  compelled  to 
summon  the  new  Congress,  now  Democratic  in 
both  houses,  to  extra  session  for  the  purpose  of 
passing  the  appropriation  bills.  His  message  of 
summons  was  concise  and  to  the  point,  and  con 
tained  no  argument  in  regard  to  the  attitude  of 
the  late  Congress,  and  no  criticism  upon  it. 
It  assumed  that  Congress  would  do  its  duty. 
It  made  a  good  impression  upon  the  country, 
and  the  President  started  in  with  a  fair  field 
for  the  battle.  The  Congress  passed,  first,  the 
appropriation  Bill  for  the  army,  and  tacked  to 
it  the  repeal  of  the  law  authorizing  the  employ 
ment  of  an  armed  force  to  keep  the  peace  at 
the  polls.  The  President  sent  his  veto  of  this 
Bill  to  the  House  of  Representatives  on  April 
29,  1879.  The  President  objected  to  the  pro 
visions  of  the  Bill  against  using  an  armed  force 
to  keep  the  peace  at  the  polls,  on  the  ground  that 
it  left  the  civil  officers  of  the  elections  without 
protection  in  case  of  riot,  and  without  physical 
power  to  enforce  the  laws.  But  his  chief  ob 
jection  to  the  whole  Bill  was  that,  by  the  tack 
ing  process,  it  undertook  to  force  the  executive 
into  submission  to  the  legislature  in  a  way  not 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  117 

provided  in  the  Constitution.     His  position  was 
stated  in  the  following  words: 

"On  the  assembling  of  this  Congress,  in  pur 
suance  of  a  call  for  an  extra  session,  which  was 
made  necessary  by  the  failure  of  the  Forty-fifth 
Congress  to  make  the  needful  appropriations  for 
the  support  of  the  government,  the  question  was 
presented  whether  the  attempt  made  in  the  last 
Congress  to  engraft  by  construction  a  new  prin 
ciple  upon  the  Constitution  should  be  persisted 
in  or  not.  That  principle  is,  that  the  House  of 
Representatives  has  the  sole  right  to  originate 
bills  for  raising  revenue  and,  therefore,  has  the 
right  to  withhold  appropriations  upon  which  the 
existence  of  the  government  may  depend,  unless 
the  Senate  and  the  President  shall  give  their 
consent  to  any  legislation  which  the  House  may 
see  fit  to  attach  to  the  appropriation  Bills.  To 
establish  this  principle  is  to  make  a  radical, 
dangerous,  and  unconstitutional  change  in  the 
character  of  our  institutions.  That  a  majority 
of  the  Senate  now  concurs  in  the  claim  of  the 
House  adds  to  the  gravity  of  the  situation,  but 
does  not  alter  the  question  at  issue.  The  new 
doctrine,  if  maintained,  will  result  in  a  consoli- 


118      THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

dation  of  unchecked  and  despotic  power  in  the 
House  of  Representatives.  A  bare  majority 
of  the  House  will  become  the  government. 
The  executive  will  no  longer  be,  what  the  fram- 
ers  of  the  Constitution  intended,  an  equal  and 
independent  branch  of  the  government.  It  is 
clearly  the  constitutional  duty  of  the  President 
to  exercise  his  discretion  and  judgment  upon 
all  bills  presented  to  him  without  constraint  or 
duress  from  any  other  branch  of  the  government. 
To  say  that  a  majority  of  either  or  both  of  the 
houses  of  Congress  may  insist  on  the  approval 
of  a  bill  under  the  penalty  of  stopping  all  of  the 
operations  of  the  government,  for  want  of  the 
necessary  supplies,  is  to  deny  to  the  executive 
that  share  of  the  legislative  power  which  is 
plainly  conferred  by  the  second  section  of  the 
Seventh  Article  of  the  Constitution.  It  strikes 
from  the  Constitution  the  qualified  negative  of 
the  President.  It  is  said  that  this  should  be 
done  because  it  is  the  peculiar  function  of  the 
House  of  Representatives  to  represent  the  will 
of  the  people.  But  no  single  branch  or  depart 
ment  of  the  government  has  exclusive  authority 
to  speak  for  the  American  people.  The  most 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  119 

authentic  and  solemn  expression  of  their  will 
is  contained  in  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States.  By  that  Constitution  they  have  or 
dained  and  established  a  government  whose 
powers  are  distributed  among  co-ordinate 
branches,  which,  as  far  as  possible,  consistently 
with  a  harmonious  co-operation,  are  absolutely 
independent  of  each  other.  The  people  of  this 
country  are  unwilling  to  see  the  supremacy  of 
the  Constitution  replaced  by  the  omnipotence 
of  any  department  of  the  government. 

"The  enactment  of  this  Bill  into  a  law  will 
establish  a  precedent  which  will  tend  to  de 
stroy  the  equal  independence  of  the  several 
branches  of  the  government.  Its  principle 
places  not  merely  the  Senate  and  the  executive, 
but  the  judiciary  also,  under  the  coercive  dic 
tation  of  the  House.  The  House  alone  will  be 
the  judge  of  what  constitutes  a  grievance,  and 
also  of  the  means  and  measures  of  redress. 
An  act  of  Congress  to  protect  elections  is  now 
the  grievance  complained  of.  But  the  House 
may  on  the  same  principle  determine  that  any 
other  act  of  Congress,  a  treaty  made  by  the 
President,  with  the  advice  and  consent  of  the 


120       THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

Senate,  a  nomination  or  appointment  to  office, 
or  that  a  decision  or  opinion  of  the  Supreme 
Court  is  a  grievance,  and  that  the  measure  of 
redress  is  to  withhold  the  appropriations  re 
quired  for  the  support  of  the  offending  branch 
of  the  government.  Believing  that  this  Bill  is 
a  dangerous  violation  of  the  spirit  and  mean 
ing  of  the  Constitution,  I  am  compelled  to  re 
turn  it  to  the  House  in  which  it  originated 
without  my  approval.  The  qualified  negative 
with  which  the  Constitution  invests  the  Presi 
dent  is  a  trust  that  involves  a  duty  which  he 
cannot  decline  to  perform.  With  a  firm  and 
conscientious  purpose  to  do  what  I  can  to  pre 
serve  unimpaired  the  constitutional  powers  and 
equal  independence,  not  merely  of  the  execu 
tive,  but  of  every  branch  of  the  government, 
which  will  be  imperilled  by  the  adoption  of  the 
principle  of  this  Bill,  I  desire  earnestly  to  urge 
upon  the  House  of  Representatives  a  return  to 
the  wise  and  wholesome  usage  of  the  earlier 
days  of  the  Republic,  which  excluded  from  ap 
propriation  Bills  all  irrelevant  legislation.  By 
this  course  you  will  inaugurate  an  important 
reform  in  the  method  of  Congressional  legisla- 


PRESIDENT  HAYES 

tion.  Your  action  will  be  in  harmony  with  the 
fundamental  principles  of  the  Constitution  and 
the  patriotic  sentiment  of  nationality  which  is 
their  firm  support;  and  you  will  restore  to  the 
country  that  feeling  of  confidence  and  security 
and  the  repose  which  are  so  essential  to  the 
prosperity  of  all  our  fellow  citizens." 

The  houses  of  Congress  were  unable  to  pass 
the  Bill  over  the  veto,  and  they  separated  the 
two  parts  and  passed  the  rider  in  a  somewhat 
modified  form  which,  however,  failed  under  the 
veto  of  the  President.  Finally  they  passed  the 
army  appropriation  Bill  with  a  proviso  that  the 
army  of  the  United  States  should  not  be  used 
as  a  police  force  at  the  polls.  As  this  was  al 
ready  the  law,  the  President  allowed  them  to 
save  their  faces,  in  some  measure,  in  this  way, 
and  signed  the  Bill. 

In  the  meanwhile  the  houses  had  tacked  the 
repeal  of  the  national  election  laws,  under  the 
form  of  such  a  modification  of  them  as  to  make 
them  almost  incapable  of  enforcement,  and  of 
the  juror's  test  oath,  to  the  appropriation  Bill 
for  the  support  of  the  legislative,  executive,  and 
judicial  departments  of  the  government.  After 


THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

the  crushing  veto  of  the  army  appropriation 
Bill,  they  separated  the  Bill  for  the  support  of 
the  legislative,  executive,  and  judicial  depart 
ments  into  two  measures,  the  one  an  appropria 
tion  Bill  for  the  legislative  and  executive  depart 
ments  without  any  rider  of  any  kind,  and  the 
other  an  appropriation  Bill  for  the  judicial  de 
partment,  with  riders  abolishing  the  juror's  test 
oath  and  forbidding  the  use  of  any  of  the  ap 
propriation  for  enforcing  the  existing  national 
election  laws. 

The  President  vetoed  this  latter  Bill  on  like 
grounds  to  those  contained  in  the  veto  of  the 
army  appropriation  Bill,  and  the  houses  were 
unable  to  pass  the  Bill  over  his  veto.  They  now 
divided  this  Bill  into  two  parts,  the  one  an  ap 
propriation  Bill  for  the  judicial  department 
without  any  rider,  but  without  any  provision 
for  the  payment  of  the  United  States  marshals 
and  deputy-marshals,  and  the  other  an  appro 
priation  Bill  for  the  payment  of  these  with  the 
rider,  forbidding  the  use  of  any  of  the  appro 
priation  for  the  enforcement  of  the  national 
election  laws.  The  President  signed  the  former 
and  vetoed  the  latter.  The  Congressional  session 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  123 

closed  without  making  any  appropriation  for 
the  payment  of  the  marshals  and  the  deputy- 
marshals.  Under  exhortation  and  encourage 
ment  from  the  President,  these  kept  on  doing 
their  duties  patriotically  without  pay.  At  the 
next  session,  that  of  1879-80,  the  houses  passed 
an  appropriation  Bill  for  the  payment  of  the 
marshals  and  deputy-marshals  with  a  rider  emas 
culating  that  part  of  the  existing  law  relating 
to  the  employment  of  special  deputy-marshals. 
The  President  refused  to  have  his  consent  to 
the  rider,  which  he  did  not  approve,  forced  by 
the  tacking  process  and  vetoed  this  Bill.  The 
houses  finally  gave  way  entirely  and  passed 
the  Bill  without  any  rider. 

The  President  had  won  a  double  victory,  and, 
in  both  parts,  completely.  He  had  vindicated 
the  right  and  power  of  the  national  government 
to  regulate  by  national  law  subjects  made  na 
tional  by  the  Constitution  and  to  enforce  such 
national  law  by  national  officials,  and  he  had 
prevented  the  parliamentary  system  of  govern 
ment,  the  system  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  lower 
house  of  the  legislature,  the  system  which  finally 
extinguishes  all  of  the  constitutional  immunities 


THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

of  the  individual,  from  displacing  the  check- 
and-balance  system  provided  by  the  Constitu 
tion  for  the  purpose  of  maintaining  and  protect 
ing  those  immunities.  This  alone  would  have 
been  sufficient  to  have  made  President  Hayes5 
administration  immortal.  His  contemporaries 
recognized  in  some,  though  not  in  full,  degree 
the  value  of  the  great  service  he  had  done  the 
country.  The  President  was  not  unduly  elated 
by  their  approval.  He  knew  perfectly  the  fick 
leness  of  public  opinion,  and  he  had  a  fight  on 
with  the  bosses  of  his  party  for  the  reform  of  the 
civil  service  which  he  knew  well  would  strain 
the  force  of  his  favor  with  his  party  to  the  ut 
most.  He  wrote  in  his  diary:  "When  The 
Tribune  can  say:  'The  President  has  the  cour 
tesy  of  a  Chesterfield  and  the  firmness  of  a 
Jackson,'  I  must  be  prepared  for  the  reaction 
ary  counterblast." 

So  soon  as  the  President  had  settled  the  South 
ern  question  by  the  withdrawal  of  the  troops, 
he  addressed  himself  to  the  great  problem  of 
improving  the  civil  service.  In  the  early  days 
of  the  Republic,  when  the  number  of  officials 
was  relatively  small,  and  before  the  European 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  125 

idea  of  permanency  of  term  had  given  way  to 
the  new  American  idea  of  a  change  of  all  offi 
cers  at  the  beginning  of  each  new  administra 
tion,  it  was  possible  for  the  President  and  the 
heads  of  the  departments  to  select  from  among 
their  personal  acquaintances  proper  incumbents 
for  the  civil  service  of  the  government.  After 
these  changes,  however,  began  to  have  their  ap 
preciable  and  then  their  full  effect,  in  the  sixth 
and  seventh  decades  of  the  last  century,  it  be 
came  more  and  more  manifest  that  this  was  no 
longer  possible.  Already  in  the  year  1853  and 
1855  laws  had  been  passed  by  Congress  requir 
ing  examinations  of  candidates  for  office  in  the 
national  civil  service.  The  character  of  the 
examinations  was  not,  however,  fixed  by  these 
laws,  and  it  soon  became  manifest  that  the  ar 
bitrariness  and  favoritism  which  had  formerly 
characterized  the  appointments  had  only  been 
transferred  back  to  the  determination  of  the 
admission  to  examination. 

By  1865,  and  with  the  great  increase  in  the 
number  of  offices  in  the  civil  service,  the  griev 
ance  became  a  crying  one,  and  in  1866  Mr. 
Jenckes,  of  Rhode  Island,  began  the  agitation  for 


126      THE  ADMINISTRATION  OP 

reform  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  and  in 

1869  Mr.  Schurz,  in  the  Senate.    This  agitation 
continued  during  the  next  four  years,  and  in 

1870  was  increased  and  furthered  by  the  rec 
ommendations  of  President  Grant  in  his  annual 
message  of  that  year.     In  this  message  Presi 
dent  Grant  called  the  existing  system  of  ap 
pointment  to  the  civil  offices  of  the  government 
an  abuse,  and  asked  that  Congress  immediately 
find  the  remedy  for  it.     He  said:  "The  present 
system  does  not  secure  the  best  men,  not  even 
fit  men,  for  public  place.     The  elevation  and 
purification  of  the  civil  service  of  the  govern 
ment  will  be  hailed  with  approval  by  the  whole 
people  of  the  United  States."    Under  this  pres 
sure  Congress  passed  the  Act  of  March  3,  1871, 
vesting  in   the  President  the  power  to  make 
rules  and  regulations  for  admission  to  the  civil 
service  of  the  government. 

The  President  immediately  constituted  a 
civil-service  commission  with  Mr.  George  W. 
Curtis  for  its  chairman.  This  commission 
adopted  the  principle  of  free  competitive  ex 
aminations  for  admission  to  the  civil  service, 
admitting  new  men,  through  these,  only  to  the 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  127 

lowest  grades  in  the  service  and  promoting  from 
the  lower  to  the  higher  grades.  The  hostility 
of  the  spoilsmen  of  both  of  the  great  parties, 
and  especially  of  the  Republican,  as  the  ruling 
party,  to  the  new  system  of  non-partisan,  busi 
ness  administration  in  the  middle  and  lower 
offices  quickly  manifested  itself.  Congress  re 
fused  to  continue  the  appropriation  for  the 
commission,  and  President  Grant  let  the  matter 
drop.  The  improvement  in  the  service  had, 
however,  been  so  evident  that  the  country 
clamored  for  the  continuance  of  the  reform. 
The  national  conventions  of  both  of  the  great 
parties  in  1876  contained  civil-service-reform 
planks  in  their  platforms. 

If  the  writers  of  these  planks  intended  them 
simply  for  political  effect,  and  supposed  that 
the  newly  to  be  elected  President  would  ignore 
them  at  a  sign  from  the  party  leaders,  they 
greatly  misread  the  character  of  Mr.  Hayes. 
In  his  letter  of  acceptance,  and  in  his  inaugural 
address,  he  dwelt  particularly  upon  this  subject, 
and  gave  strong  evidence  of  his  earnestness  and 
determination  concerning  it.  He  declared  in 
his  inaugural  address  that  the  reform  must  be 


128      THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

"thorough,  radical,  and  complete,"  and  indicated 
what  he  meant  by  this,  viz.:  appointment  on 
the  ground  of  capacity  alone;  security  of  tenure 
on  the  ground  of  honesty  and  faithful  perform 
ance  of  duty;  and  freedom  from  any  of  the  re 
quirements  of  partisan  service.  It  was  in  this 
connection  that  he  used  the  famous  sentence 
which  has  taken  its  place  among  American 
political  maxims,  and  to  which  I  have  already 
referred:  "He  serves  his  party  best  who  serves 
his  country  best." 

In  the  carrying  out  of  this  reform  it  was  upon 
Mr.  Schurz  more  than  upon  any  other  member 
of  his  Cabinet  that  President  Hayes  relied.  Mr. 
Schurz  was  the  idealist,  with  great  historical 
knowledge  and  a  wide,  practical  experience  both 
in  Europe  and  America.  He  had  the  indepen 
dence  of  superior  knowledge,  and  the  strength 
and  tenacity  of  absolute  uprightness.  Presi 
dent  Hayes  knew  well  his  great  worth  and  gave 
him  unreserved  confidence.  The  President  ap 
pointed  him  with  Mr.  Evarts,  at  the  very  outset, 
as  a  committee  of  the  Cabinet  for  formulating 
the  regulations  governing  appointments.  Evi 
dently  the  President  was  determined  to  take  the 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  129 

matter  of  civil-service  reform  into  his  own  hands 
and  not  wait  for  the  action  of  Congress.  Sec 
retary  Schurz  immediately  reformed  his  own 
department  on  the  principles  laid  down  in  the 
President's  inaugural  address,  and  made  it  the 
model  and  the  object-lesson  for  all  the  others 
and  for  the  entire  service.  Everything  super 
fluous  was  done  away  with,  all  incompetent  or 
unfaithful  persons  were  dismissed,  and  honesty, 
capacity,  efficiency,  and  fidelity  to  duty  became 
the  sole  ground  of  appointment  to,  continuance 
in,  and  advancement  in,  office.  All  the  de 
partments  at  Washington  quickly  followed  the 
example  of  the  Department  of  the  Interior,  and 
a  marked  improvement  was  distinctly  observed 
throughout  all  the  offices  at  the  national  capital. 
The  next  step  was  to  extend  the  reform  from 
Washington  throughout  the  country.  The  most 
important  place  in  the  whole  country,  outside 
of  Washington,  required  it  most  pressingly, 
viz.:  the  New  York  custom  house.  Two- 
thirds  of  the  customs  revenue  of  the  entire  na 
tion  were  collected  there.  Two-thirds  of  the 
imports  of  the  entire  nation  passed  through  its 
gates.  Here,  therefore,  was  the  greatest  pos- 


130       THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

sible  opportunity  for  political  favoritism,  in- 
competency,  fraud,  and  corruption.  And  this 
possible  opportunity  had  been  well  improved. 
The  place  was  filled  with  holders  of  sinecures, 
pot-house  politicians,  and  incompetents.  Graft 
abounded  everywhere,  from  passing  dutiable 
articles  of  personal  baggage  for  a  tip  to  under 
valuing  the  imports  made  by  New  York  City 
merchants  who  had  sufficient  political  influence 
to  bring  it  about.  Secretary  Sherman  appointed 
an  investigating  committee  with  the  venerable 
and  upright  John  Jay  as  its  chairman,  who  re 
ported  the  most  scandalous  condition  of  affairs 
and  recommended  its  speedy  and  radical  cure. 
On  the  26th  of  May,  1877,  the  President  sent 
Secretary  Sherman  a  written  communication 
approving  the  recommendations  of  the  com 
mittee.  He  wrote:  "It  is  my  wish  that  the 
collection  of  the  revenues  shall  be  free  from 
partisan  control,  and  organized  on  a  strictly 
business  basis,  with  the  same  guarantees  for  effi 
ciency  and  fidelity  required  by  a  prudent  mer 
chant.  Party  leaders  should  have  no  more  in 
fluence  in  appointments  than  other  equally 
respectable  citizens.  No  assessment  for  politi- 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  131 

cal  purposes  on  officers  or  subordinates  should 
be  allowed.  No  useless  officer  or  employee 
should  be  retained.  No  officer  should  be  re 
quired  or  permitted  to  take  part  in  the  manage 
ment  of  political  organizations,  caucuses,  con 
ventions,  or  election  campaigns.  Their  right 
to  vote,  and  to  express  their  views  on  public 
questions,  either  orally  or  through  the  press,  is 
not  denied,  provided  it  does  not  interfere  with 
their  official  duties." 

Here  was  the  whole  system  of  civil-service 
reform  in  a  nutshell.  The  Republican  politi 
cians  were  against  it  tooth  and  nail.  They  saw 
in  it  their  loss  of  patronage,  and  they  declared 
that  to  deny  to  the  office-holders  the  leadership 
in  the  caucuses  and  conventions  would  disrupt 
the  party  and  doom  it  to  defeat.  But  the  Presi 
dent  was  neither  frightened  nor  intimidated. 
On  the  2£d  day  of  June,  1877,  he  caused  a  letter 
to  be  addressed  to  all  civil  officers  of  the  govern 
ment  containing  the  following  instructions:  "No 
officer  should  be  required  or  permitted  to  take 
part  in  the  management  of  political  organiza 
tions,  caucuses,  conventions,  or  election  cam 
paigns.  The  right  to  vote  and  to  express  their 


132      THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

views  on  public  questions,  either  orally  or 
through  the  press,  is  not  denied,  provided  it 
does  not  interfere  with  their  official  duties.  No 
assessment  for  political  purposes,  on  officers 
or  subordinates,  should  be  allowed.  This  rule 
is  applicable  to  every  department  of  the  civil 
service.  It  should  be  understood  by  every 
officer  of  the  general  government  that  he  is  ex 
pected  to  conform  his  conduct  to  its  require 
ments." 

The  President  thus  threw  down  the  gauge 
of  battle  to  the  spoilsmen  everywhere.  He 
pursued  his  course  without  wavering,  but  was 
able  to  execute  his  order  only  in  part.  His 
opponents  pointed  to  the  Republican  defeats 
in  the  State  elections  in  the  autumn  of  1877  as 
the  fruit  of  his  policy  of  denying  to  the  officials 
the  control  of  the  party  organization.  He  ad 
mitted  that  the  first  effect  of  this  policy  was  dis 
organizing,  but  contended  that  this  would  be 
speedily  followed  by  a  better  and  purer  organiza 
tion,  and  he  called  upon  Congress,  in  his  message 
of  December  3,  1877,  to  revive  the  civil-service 
commission,  constituted  by  the  law  of  March 
3,  1871,  still  in  existence,  by  making  a  suitable 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  133 

appropriation  for  its  support.  Pronunciamentos 
and  recommendations  would  not,  however,  solve 
the  question.  The  order  of  June  £2d  must  be 
enforced,  and  enforced,  first  of  all,  against  the 
highest  offenders.  These  were  the  officers  of 
the  New  York  custom  house,  Mr.  Chester  A. 
Arthur,  the  collector,  and  Mr.  Alonzo  B.  Cor 
nell,  the  naval  officer.  These  men  openly  de 
fied  the  order  and  continued  managing  the 
conventions  and  caucuses  of  the  Republican 
party.  Mr.  Cornell  persisted  in  holding  his 
place  as  the  chairman  of  the  Republican  State 
committee  of  the  State  of  New  York.  Presi 
dent  Hayes  first  asked  these  two  men  to  resign 
their  offices.  They  ignored  his  request  and  he 
nominated  Mr.  Theodore  Roosevelt,  Sr.,  and 
Mr.  L.  Bradford  Prince  to  take  their  places. 
At  the  same  time  he  nominated  Mr.  Edwin  A. 
Merritt  to  take  the  place  of  Mr.  Sharpe,  whose 
term  as  surveyor  of  the  port  had  expired.  As 
the  Senate  was  in  session  these  nominations  went 
to  it  immediately  for  confirmation.  Since  Mr. 
Merritt's  nomination  was  to  a  vacancy,  the 
Senate  confirmed  it,  but  Senator  Conkling  and 
his  spoilsmen  colleagues  were  able,  after  a  fierce 


134       THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

and  acrimonious  debate,  to  reject  the  nomina 
tions  of  Roosevelt  and  Prince,  and  keep  Mr. 
Arthur  and  Mr.  Cornell  in  their  places.  The 
President  remained,  however,  undaunted  by 
this  defeat.  He  wrote  in  his  memorandum  of 
events:  "I  am  right,  and  shall  not  give  up  the 
contest."  He  waited  until  the  session  of  the 
Senate  expired,  and,  it  having  daily  become 
more  manifest  that  the  reforms  could  not  be  car 
ried  out  in  the  New  York  custom  house  with 
Arthur  and  Cornell  as  collector  and  naval  offi 
cer,  backed  by  Conkling  and  the  spoilsmen,  he 
suspended  them  from  office  and  appointed  Mr. 
Merritt,  the  surveyor  of  the  port,  to  the  collec- 
torship,  and  Mr.  Silas  W.  Burt,  the  deputy  naval 
officer,  to  the  survey orship.  Of  course,  these 
names  had,  according  to  the  existing  Tenure  of 
Office  Acts,  to  be  submitted  to  the  Senate  for 
confirmation  upon  the  reassembly  of  the  body, 
i.  e.,  in  December  of  1878.  So  soon  as  this  was 
done,  the  contest  broke  out  anew  and  raged  for 
nearly  two  months.  At  last  the  President, 
judging  the  moment  opportune,  sent  a  message 
to  the  Senate,  enclosing  a  letter  from  the  Secre 
tary  of  the  Treasury  which  exposed  the  scandals 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  135 

of  the  custom  house  so  thoroughly  that  many 
of  the  senators  saw  that  the  courtesy  of  the 
Senate  for  Mr.  Conkling  could  no  longer  with 
stand  the  popular  displeasure.  On  the  3d  of 
February,  1879,  the  Senate  confirmed  the  Presi 
dent's  nominations,  and  the  great  battle  was 
won. 

The  President  now  caused  a  code  of  rules  to 
be  formulated  regulating  appointments  to,  pro 
motion  in,  and  dismissal  from,  office  in  the  civil 
service,  divorcing  the  service  entirely  from  poli 
tics  and  basing  it  on  ability,  honesty,  and  effi 
ciency,  as  determined  impartially  by  competitive 
examinations  and  actual  work.  This  code  was 
framed  primarily  for  the  New  York  custom 
house  and  post-office,  but  it  was  put  in  opera 
tion  in  all  the  great  administrative  offices 
throughout  the  country. 

It  will  be  seen,  however,  that  the  civil-ser 
vice  reform  as  instituted  by  President  Hayes 
was  one  founded  on  rules  issued  wholly  by  the 
Executive  Department  of  the  government,  and 
put  in  practice  by  the  officers  in  each  depart 
ment.  In  a  monarchy,  that  is,  in  a  government 
where  the  executive  holds  his  office  for  life  and 


136       THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

by  the  tenure  of  hereditary  right,  such  a  reform 
may  be,  probably  would  be,  permanent;  but  in 
a  government  where  the  executive  is  elected 
and  holds  for  a  short  term  of  years,  it  is  exposed 
to  the  risk  of  vicious  modifications  and  even 
total  abandonment.  Naturally,  therefore,  Presi 
dent  Hayes  sought  to  give  his  great  work  per 
manence  by  appealing  to  Congress  to  put  it  on 
the  foundation  of  organic  statutes. 

In  his  annual  message  of  December  1,  1879, 
he  transmitted  to  Congress  an  elaborate  re 
port  by  Mr.  D.  B.  Eaton,  the  chairman  of  the 
civil-service  commission,  who  generously  served 
without  compensation  in  that  capacity,  urged 
Congress  to  co-operate  with  the  executive  in 
furthering  the  reform  and  in  placing  it  upon  the 
basis  of  Congressional  statutes  instead  of  execu 
tive  ordinances,  and  recommended  a  suitable 
appropriation  for  the  support  of  the  work  of 
the  civil-service  commission  in  extending  the 
reform  throughout  every  branch  of  the  admin 
istrative  service.  Still  Congress,  composed  now 
in  both  branches  of  Democrats  in  majority, 
would  not  heed  him.  He  struggled  on  another 
year,  doing  everything  in  his  power  without 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  137 

the  support  of  statutory  provisions  and  perma 
nent  laws.  The  service  was  improving  all  the 
time,  however,  and  while  he  was  subjected  to 
fierce  criticism  from  the  spoilsmen,  on  the  one 
side,  whom  he  was  depriving  of  patronage,  and 
from  the  radical  reformers  on  the  other,  for 
whom  he  did  not  advance  fast  enough,  he  never 
theless  built  steadily  the  structure,  which  was 
never  again  completely  demolished,  and  which 
is  now  at  last  fairly  well  established. 

In  his  final  annual  message,  that  of  December 
6,  1880,  he  made  a  last  vigorous  appeal  to  Con 
gress  to  give  his  great  work  the  permanency  of 
law.  He  told  Congress  that  the  stability  of  the 
government  was  threatened  by  the  dangers  of 
patronage,  i.  e.,  of  appointments  upon  recom 
mendation  by  the  members  of  Congress  "for 
personal  or  partisan  considerations,"  and  that 
these  dangers  increased  with  "the  enlargement 
of  the  administrative  service  and  the  growth  of 
the  country  in  population."  He  implored  Con 
gress  to  meet  these  dangers  and  dispel  them  by 
laws  confirming  and  making  universal  the  sys 
tem  of  competitive  examinations  for  appoint 
ment,  which  he  had  instituted,  relieving  the 


138       THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

members  of  Congress  from  "the  demands  made 
upon  them  by  their  constituents  with  reference 
to  appointments  to  office,  defining  the  relations 
of  the  members  of  Congress  to  the  same,  enabling 
the  officers  of  the  government  to  safely  refuse 
demands  upon  their  salaries  for  political  pur 
poses,  and  making  regular  and  sufficient  appro 
priation  of  funds  for  supporting  and  developing 
the  work  of  the  civil-service  commission."  He 
also  begged  Congress  to  repeal  the  vicious  Ten 
ure  of  Office  Act  of  March  2,  1867,  which  had 
contributed  so  greatly  to  the  demoralization  of 
the  civil  service,  in  high  instance,  by  giving  the 
confidential  advisers  of  the  President  a  power 
over  him,  at  the  pleasure  of  the  Senate,  most 
destructive  to  the  proper  order  of  authority  in 
the  administration  of  the  government. 

But  Congress  was  as  deaf  as  ever  to  his  plea, 
and  he  left  the  great  office  three  months  later 
with  the  feeling  that  the  great  structure  which 
he  had  reared  rested  only  upon  a  foundation 
of  sand.  But  it  was  not  so.  His  work  had  been 
a  great  object-lesson  to  the  American  people, 
and  it  has  never  again  been  possible  for  any 
subsequent  administration  to  ignore  it.  He  had 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  139 

builded  better  than  he  knew,  and  it  was  vouch 
safed  to  him  by  a  kind  Providence  to  see  that 
himself  before  he  was  gathered  to  his  fathers. 

The  settlement  of  the  Southern  question,  the 
resumption  of  specie  payment,  and  the  reform 
of  governmental  practice  and  service  were  the 
great  achievements  of  the  Hayes  administra 
tion,  but  other  things  were  successfully  accom 
plished,  always  with  the  same  sound  judgment 
and  in  the  same  high  tone.  There  were  serious 
disturbances  with  Mexico  attending  the  violent 
advent  of  Porfirio  Diaz  to  the  presidency  of 
that  turbulent  people  not  at  all  unlike  what 
has  been  taking  place  there  during  the  last  two 
or  three  years.  Mr.  Hayes  was  no  more  pleased 
with  the  way  Diaz  came  to  the  presidency  than 
was  Mr.  Wilson  with  the  supposed  or  assumed 
complicity  of  Huerta  in  the  killing  of  Madero, 
and  there  were  the  same  violations  of,  and 
dangers  to,  American  interests,  and  the  same 
boundary  infractions  by  Mexican  marauders  to 
be  dealt  with.  But  Mr.  Hayes  was  a  practical 
statesman,  of  refined  manners,  and  he  had  at 
his  council-table  in  the  Department  of  Foreign 
Affairs  a  rather  indifferent  politician  indeed,  but 


140       THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

the  best  international  lawyer  in  the  country, 
and  while  the  administration  "waited  watch 
fully"  for  Diaz  to  re-establish  order  at  the  cen 
tre,  and  threw  nothing  in  the  nature  of  ideal 
Democratic  principles  in  his  way,  and  extended 
no  aid  to  his  adversaries,  it  sent  General  Ord 
and  the  soldiers  to  the  Rio  Grande  and  in 
structed  him  to  protect  our  boundary  and,  if 
necessary,  to  pursue  those  infracting  it  into 
Mexico  and  punish  them  and  recapture  stolen 
property,  with  the  result  that  Diaz  became  firmly 
established  and  universally  commanding,  and  to 
Mexico  was  vouchsafed  thirty-five  years  of  such 
peace  and  prosperity  as  it  had  never  before  en 
joyed  and,  I  fear,  never  will  again. 

The  policy  of  the  President  in  the  Chinese 
question  was  no  less  wise,  just,  firm,  and  suc 
cessful.  The  Pacific  coast  was  roused  to  a  frenzy 
of  excitement  over  the  influx  of  the  quiet,  in 
dustrious  Chinese  laborers,  and  demanded  the 
instant  abrogation,  by  Congressional  act,  of  our 
treaty  with  China  allowing  the  free  ingress  of 
the  subjects  of  each  country  to  the  other.  Con 
gress,  under  the  influence  of  political  pressure, 
passed  the  act  abrogating  the  treaty,  but  the 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  141 

President  vetoed  it  on  the  ground  that,  except 
under  dire  necessity,  which  did  not  then  exist, 
it  would  be  a  violation  of  international  good 
faith,  and  the  houses  were  unable  to  repass  it 
in  sufficient  majority  to  overcome  the  veto. 
The  President  then  took  the  matter  up  diplo 
matically  with  the  Chinese  government  and 
secured  by  mutual  agreement  the  desired  relief. 

It  was  during  President  Hayes5  administra 
tion  also  that  the  French  Republic  undertook, 
through  nominally  private  enterprise,  to  get 
hold  of  the  construction  and  control  of  the  con 
nection  by  canal  of  the  Atlantic  and  Pacific 
Oceans  through  the  Isthmus  of  Panama,  and  it 
was  President  Hayes  who,  first  of  American 
Presidents,  formulated  the  policy  of  the  United 
States  in  regard  to  such  a  waterway.  In  a 
special  message  of  March  8,  1880,  the  President 
declared: 

"The  policy  of  this  country  is  a  canal  under 
American  control.  The  United  States  cannot 
consent  to  the  surrender  of  this  control  to  any 
European  power  or  to  any  combination  of  Euro 
pean  powers.  If  existing  treaties  between  the 
United  States  and  other  nations,  or  if  the  rights 


142       THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

of  sovereignty  or  property  of  other  nations, 
stand  in  the  way  of  this  policy  —  a  con 
tingency  which  is  not  apprehended  —  suitable 
steps  should  be  taken  by  just  and  liberal  ne 
gotiations  to  promote  and  establish  the  Ameri 
can  policy  on  this  subject,  consistently  with  the 
rights  of  the  nations  to  be  affected  by  it." 

President  Hayes  did  not  live  to  see  the  prin 
ciple  which  he  formulated  regarding  the  Panama 
Canal  realized,  but  I  venture  to  say  that  had 
he  been  in  the  presidential  chair  when  the  time 
was  ripe  for  it,  he  would  have  acted  with  no 
less  decision  and  effectiveness,  though  perhaps 
with  more  impeccable  diplomacy,  than  his  suc 
cessor  in  office  did. 

Returning  again  from  the  foreign  to  the  do 
mestic  field,  we  must  not  overlook  the  great  fact 
that  President  Hayes'  administration  found 
the  key  to  the  solution  of  our  long- vexing  Indian 
problem,  and  advanced  that  solution  many 
stages  towards  completion.  To  his  brilliant 
Secretary  of  the  Interior,  the  statesman  with  a 
conscience  and  an  ideal,  President  Hayes  him 
self  was  accustomed  to  ascribe  the  success  of 
his  administration  in  the  handling  of  the  Indian 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  143 

problem.  But  we  must  remember  that  it  was 
President  Hayes'  sound  judgment  of  men  that 
brought  Mr.  Schurz  into  his  Cabinet  against 
great  opposition  by  the  leaders  of  the  Repub 
lican  party.  What  Mr.  Schurz  did  also  was 
done  with  President  Hayes'  approval  and  sup 
port,  and,  therefore,  while  still  attributing  to 
Mr.  Schurz  the  initiative  in  this  great  work, 
we  must  consider  it  one  of  the  great  achieve 
ments  of  President  Hayes'  administration. 

The  elements  of  the  Indian  policy  were  simple 
as  all  great  things  are  simple.  They  were,  first, 
the  education  of  the  Indians  in  schools  apart 
from  their  tribes,  and  in  the  practical  things 
of  civilized  life.  Promising  boys  and  girls,  judi 
ciously  selected,  were  sent  to  the  Hampton  In 
stitute.  The  cavalry  barracks  at  Carlisle  were 
assigned  to  Mr.  Schurz' s  department  for  a  school 
entirely  for  the  Indians,  and  another  school 
for  them  was  established  at  Forest  Grove, 
in  the  State  of  Oregon.  In  the  second  place, 
the  allotment  to  individuals  of  small  farms  in 
complete  separate  ownership,  under  the  limita 
tion  that  they  could  not,  for  a  term  of  years,  be 
disposed  of  by  their  owners.  In  the  third  place, 


144       THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

the  sale  of  the  remaining  lands  of  the  reserva 
tions  to  white  settlers  and  the  devotion  of  the 
proceeds  to  the  Indian  fund  for  their  benefit 
and  support.  And  in  the  fourth  place,  the 
training  of  the  Indians  to  keep  order  among 
themselves  by  the  organization  of  an  Indian 
police  force  officered  by  whites. 

So  rapid  was  the  progress  of  the  Indians  under 
this  policy  that  President  Hayes  had  the  great 
satisfaction  of  writing  in  his  last  annual  message : 
"It  gives  me  great  pleasure  to  say  that  our 
Indian  affairs  appear  to  be  in  a  more  hopeful 
condition  now  than  ever  before.  The  Indians 
have  made  gratifying  progress  in  agriculture, 
herding,  and  mechanical  pursuits.  Many  who 
were  a  few  years  ago  in  hostile  conflict  with  the 
government  are  quietly  settling  down  on  farms, 
where  they  hope  to  make  their  permanent 
homes,  building  houses  and  engaging  in  the  oc 
cupations  of  civilized  life.  The  organization  of 
a  police  force  of  Indians  has  been  equally  suc 
cessful  in  maintaining  law  and  order  upon  the 
reservations,  and  in  exercising  a  wholesome 
moral  influence  upon  the  Indians  themselves." 

We  of  to-day,  the  fortunate  heirs  of  the  re- 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  145 

suits  of  this  wise  policy,  know  that  we  have 
now  no  longer  a  dangerous  Indian  problem,  and 
we  dare  not  forget  to  whom  we  owe  our  success 
in  preserving  to  civilization  the  remnants  of  a 
once  powerful  race,  a  race  which  yielded  to  us 
the  possession  of  the  continent. 

Such  was,  in  outline,  barest  outline,  the  ad 
ministration  of  Rutherford  B.  Hayes  as  the 
nineteenth  President  of  the  United  States.  It 
is  a  topic  upon  which  volumes  could  be  easily 
written,  but  when  we  say,  in  a  single  paragraph, 
that  when  he  left  the  presidential  office  the  coun 
try  enjoyed  profound  peace  and  friendship  with 
every  country  of  the  world,  that  every  great  in 
ternal  problem  —  the  Southern  problem,  the  cur 
rency  problem,  the  civil-service  problem,  and 
the  Indian  problem  —  had  been  solved  or  put 
upon  the  right  course  of  solution,  that  the  whole 
country  was  prosperous  and  happy,  and  that 
his  party  had  been  restored  to  power  in  all 
branches  of  the  government,  we  certainly  shall 
have  presented  proof  undeniable  of  the  high  suc 
cess  of  Mr.  Hayes'  administration;  and  when 
we  compare  the  situation  at  the  end  of  it  with 
the  situation  of  chaos,  confusion,  and  bad  tern- 


146      THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

per  reigning  everywhere  and  at  all  points  in 
the  beginning  of  it,  we  must  conclude  that  no 
wiser,  sounder,  and  more  successful  presidential 
period  has  ever  been  experienced  by  this  coun 
try.  If  Kenyon  College  had  never  done  any 
thing  more  for  the  country  and  the  world  than 
to  start  Rutherford  B.  Hayes  on  the  course  of 
his  higher  education,  it  would  still  have  vindi 
cated  its  title  to  existence  and  perpetuation 
and  to  the  respect  and  veneration  of  the  nation 
which  he  served  and  honored  in  the  highest 
capacity  which  can  fall  to  the  lot  of  man. 

In  estimating  the  great  services  of  President 
Hayes  to  his  country,  there  is,  however,  one 
more  very  important  factor  to  be  taken  into 
the  account,  and  I  cannot  regard  this  series  of 
lectures  upon  the  administration  of  President 
Hayes  as  complete  without  a  few  words  upon 
the  administration  of  Mrs.  Hayes.  When  Mrs. 
Hayes  went  to  Washington  as  "the  first  lady 
of  the  land,"  the  society  of  the  capital  and  of 
the  official  circles  had  reached  almost  the  limit 
of  vulgarity,  ostentation,  extravagance,  and,  in 
many  cases,  debauchery.  Much  of  the  official 
corruption  which  then  prevailed  has  been  ac- 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  147 

counted  for  by  the  pressure  which  the  men 
found  themselves  under  in  order  to  provide  dress 
and  entertainment  for  the  women.  Smoking, 
drinking,  gambling  prevailed  everywhere.  And 
it  is  not  too  severe  to  say  that  common  taste 
and  bad  manners  were  to  be  met  with  in  the 
White  House  itself.  With  the  advent  of  Mrs. 
Hayes  as  its  mistress,  everything  was  changed, 
changed  radically  and  in  the  twinkling  of  an 
eye.  Simplicity,  modesty,  refinement,  unfailing 
courtesy,  incomparable  tact,  genuine  cordiality, 
temperate  living,  and  high  thinking  took  the 
place  of  qualities  which  patriotism  forbids  me 
from  properly  designating.  The  very  highest 
type  of  genuine  Americanism,  of  the  genuine 
American  family  life,  had  now,  most  fortunately 
for  the  country  aiid  at  the  most  necessary  mo 
ment,  become  the  model  in  highest  place  for 
the  imitation  of  the  nation.  The  influence  of 
it  was  felt  immediately  through  the  official  cir 
cles,  through  the  society  of  the  capital,  and 
gradually  through  the  entire  land.  There  was 
some  ill-natured  criticism  on  the  absence  of 
wines  and  alcoholic  beverages  from  the  White 
House  entertainments,  but  Mrs.  Hayes'  one 


i«      THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF 

experience  with  them  at  the  banquet  given  in 
the  second  month  of  her  Washington  life  to  a 
couple  of  Russian  grand  dukes  was  enough  to 
determine  her  unalterably  to  banish  them  from 
her  table.  Her  entertainments  were  generous 
and  very  frequent,  and  she  kept  the  mansion 
full  of  house-parties,  while  literary,  musical, 
and  artistic  functions  were  preferred  above  all 
others.  In  a  word,  the  White  House  became, 
under  the  administration  of  Mrs.  Hayes,  a  seat 
of  finest  culture  for  the  refinement  of  the  soci 
ety  of  the  capital  and  the  country.  Since  her 
day  and  after  her  example  Washington  society 
has  never  dropped  back  again  to  the  low  level 
of  1876. 

But  Mrs.  Hayes'  administration  went  much 
further  than  the  social  regeneration  of  the  cap 
ital,  and  through  it,  in  some  degree  at  least,  of 
the  country.  She  possessed  two  qualities  which 
strengthened  the  character  of  the  President 
mightily  and  sustained  him  powerfully  in  his 
work.  The  one  was  her  passion,  I  might  almost 
say,  for  aiding  others  and  making  others  happy, 
and  the  unconsciousness  of  self  which  is  always 
the  accompaniment  of  this  high  virtue.  This 


PRESIDENT  HAYES  149 

more  than  anything  else  was  the  secret  of  her 
personal  fascination,  and  it  elevated  the  spirit 
and  character  of  every  human  being  with  whom 
she  came  in  contact.  What  an  ennobling  in 
fluence  it  must  have  had  upon  the  mind  and 
heart  of  the  man  who  was  privileged  to  live  with 
her  in  perfect  accord  for  so  many  years !  The 
President  said  of  her  after  her  departure  had 
left  him  desolate:  "I  think  of  her  as  the  golden 
rule  incarnate."  It  is  impossible  to  calculate 
the  value  of  such  a  woman,  as  life  companion, 
to  a  man  in  any  station,  so  much  more  in  high 
station,  and  so  much  more  still  in  the  highest 
station.  The  friends  and  supporters  which,  by 
this  quality,  she  drew  to  the  President  were  in 
numerable;  but  more  than  all  this  it  was  the 
influence  exerted  upon  the  development  and  re 
finement  of  his  own  character  which  must  be 
reckoned  as  of  supreme  importance. 

The  second  quality  was  her  absolute  faith  and 
confidence  in  her  husband,  in  his  ability,  his 
truthfulness,  his  conscientiousness,  his  integ 
rity,  his  singleness  of  purpose,  and  his  loyalty. 
Misunderstood,  criticised,  abused,  and  maligned, 
he  could  always  turn  to  her,  not  for  blind  de- 


150  PRESIDENT  HAYES 

votion,  but  for  intelligent  appreciation,  wise 
counsel,  friendly  advice,  and  for  complete  un 
derstanding  of  his  purposes.  There  is  no  force 
under  heaven  so  calculated  to  put  clearness  and 
correctness  into  a  man's  judgment,  courage  into 
his  heart,  and  rectitude  into  his  motives  as  such 
faith  and  confidence  on  the  part  of  a  pure,  noble, 
intelligent,  whole-hearted,  and  unselfish  woman, 
for  whose  truthfulness  of  mind  and  character 
his  respect  knows  no  limits.  Under  such  an 
influence  it  is  no  wonder  that  the  personal  and 
family  life  of  President  Hayes  was  impeccable, 
and  his  political  life  incorruptible.  It  would 
have  put  lofty  ideals  and  exalted  purposes  into 
a  man  of  far  less  original  virtue  than  was  Presi 
dent  Hayes'  heritage.  As  it  was,  and  taken  all 
in  all,  the  historian  can  say  conscientiously  and 
without  exaggeration,  that  the  finest  examples 
of  genuine  American  manhood  and  womanhood 
who  ever  occupied  the  White  House  of  the  na 
tion  were  Rutherford  Birchard  and  Lucy  Webb 
Hayes. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Appointment  to  federal  office,  16. 
Appropriation  bills,  115,  122. 
Army  Appropriation  Bill,  10. 
Arthur,  Chester  A.,  133. 

Blaine,  James  G.,  30,  58,  64,  87. 
Bland  Bill,  28,  98,  101,  105. 
Bristow,  Secretary,  31. 

Cabinet,  58,  66. 

Canvassing  boards,  State,  41,  47, 

48,  72. 

Certification  of  electors,  40. 
Chamberlain,  Governor,  73,  77. 
Character  of  Hayes,  32,  150. 
Chinese  question,  140. 
Civil  Service  Commission,  20,  126, 

132. 

Civil  Service  Reform,  125,  131. 
Coinage  history,  25. 
Coinage  of  silver,  27,  92,  95,  106, 
Commission  to  Louisiana,  82. 
Congressional  plan,  4,  8. 
Conkling,  Roscoe,  30,  58,  133,  135. 
Cornell,  Alonzo  B.,  133. 
Corruption  in  civil  service,  18. 
Counting  of  electoral  votes,  42. 
Cronin,  elector,  53.       y 
Currency  question,  91. 
Curtis,  George  W.,  126. 


Election  law,  37. 

Electoral  Commission,  44,  49,  52, 

54. 
Evarts,  William  M.,  59,  128. 

Federal  patronage  under  Grant,  15. 
Financial  question,  90. 
Fish,  Secretary,  30. 
Florida,  7,  39,  47,  49,  71. 
Free  coinage  of  silver,  27. 

Governor's  certificate  of  election, 

41. 
Grant,  President  U.  S.,  14,  19,  29, 

126. 

Greenback  currency,  24. 
Greenback  question,  103,  108. 
Grover,  Governor,  52. 

Hampton,  Wade,  73,  78. 
Hartranft,  Governor,  32. 
Hayes,  Mrs.,  2,  56,  146. 

Inaugural  address,  57. 
Indian  problem,  142. 

Johnson,  President  Andrew,  9,  13. 
Johnston,  General,  63. 
Joint  rule  of  Congress,  43. 


Davis,  Justice  David,  46. 
Devens,  Judge  Charles,  64. 
Diaz,  Porfirio,  139. 


Kenyon  College,  1,  36,  146. 
Key,  David  M.,  63,  66. 
Ku-Klux  Klan,  6. 


153 


154 


INDEX 


Legal  tender,  24. 
Lincoln- Johnson  plan,  3. 
Louisiana,  7,  39,  47,  50,  72,  73,  82. 

McCrary,  George  W.,  65. 

McCulloch,  Secretary  Hugh,  23. 

Messages:  Annual,  1877,93;  1879, 
101, 136;  1880,  104,  137, 144;  on 
Panama  Canal,  141;  on  Rela 
tion  of  Departments,  117;  on 
Resumption,  93. 

Mexico,  139. 

Military  rule,  7. 

Morton,  Oliver  P.,  31,  64. 

National  banking  system,  109. 
New  York  custom  house,  129. 
Nichols,  Governor  Francis  T.,  73, 

82. 

Oregon,  39,  48,  52. 

Packard,  Governor,  73,  82. 
Panama  Canal,  141. 
Panic  of  '73,  90. 
Parliamentary  system,    114,    117, 

123. 
Prince,  L.  Bradford,  133. 

Reconstruction:   Congressional 

plan,  4,  8;  Lincoln- Johnson  plan, 

3;  military  rule,  7. 
Refunding  public  debt,  109. 
Relation  of  departments,  114. 
Report  of  Louisiana  Commission, 

83. 
Republican  Convention  of   1876, 

35. 


Resumption  of  specie  payments, 

28,  91,  101. 

Riders  to  appropriations,  115,  121. 
Roosevelt,  Theodore,  Sr.,  133. 
Rules  for  Civil  Service,  135. 

Schurz,  Carl,  61,  126,  128,  143. 
Selection  of  electors,  38. 
Senate  action  on  Cabinet,  66. 
Sherman,  John,  60,  67,  100,  109, 

130. 

Silver  Bill,  92,  97. 
Single  term,  112. 
South  Carolina,  7,  39,  47,  49,  72, 

73,  77. 

Southern  question,  settlement  of, 

74,  89. 

Speculation,  22. 
Stalwarts,  68,  71,  75,  88. 
Stanton,  Edwin  M.,  12. 

State  power  over  Federal  elections, 

38. 

Stearns,  Governor,  47. 
Summary  of  administration,  145. 

Tenure  of  Office  Act,  9,  12,  138. 
Term  of  President,  112. 
Thompson,   Colonel  Richard  W., 

64. 

Tilden,  Samuel  J.,  47,  48,  50. 
Tribune,  The  New  York,  124. 
Twenty-second  Joint  Rule,  43. 

U.  S.  Notes,  103,  108. 

Vetoes,  99,  110, 116,  120,  122,  141. 

Watts,  Republican  elector,  52. 
Wheeler,  W.  H.,  32. 


14  DAY  USE 

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